Moths And Rust

Money and the possessions, security, and fulfillment that money can provide are not Biblically sinful.  They are not the same as arrogance or greed or a focus on material prosperity over philosophical truths and how one treats others.  A person could err by having these intentions without having money or a vast range of possessions, and having money or what it can purchase does not necessarily have these priorities or motivations.  It remains irrational to think that the security or pleasure offered by money cannot wane or vanish altogether.  Whether due to social disorder or personal negligence or some other metaphysical possibility such as object permanence ceasing to be part of our perceptions, there are scores of ways that money and possessions could fail to endure.  This is part of what Jesus addresses in Matthew 6:19-21, but this alone would be incomplete and actually have dire ramifications for the standing of humanity.

These verses are where Jesus famously reminds his audience that "moths and rust" can destroy the material items people find pleasure or even, for some, an illusory kind of grand existential comfort in.  Nowhere here does Jesus say that wealth and possessions are evil.  Moreover, there are multiple Biblical examples that would contradict him if he had said such a thing.  Job was directly blessed by God with abundant animals and other wealth (Job 1); material prosperity of everything from agricultural growth and beyond was one of the promised conditions if only the Israelites would consistently submit to Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 28).  Ultimately, that the Bible nowhere condemns having or wanting wealth means that it is not morally problematic just to have it or hope for it (Deuteronomy 4:2).  What Jesus is drawing attention to is the futility of pursuing what in some contexts amounts to consumerism, as Americans might call it.

This much that Jesus says is true.  It is of course possible for even the most pristine or durable belonging to be reduced to decay, to in some way lose its initial status of wholeness or to be taken away by some circumstance.  Possessions of all kinds can be lost, stolen, damaged, or completely destroyed, and a life of blind or consumeristic indulgence neither prepares someone to experientially grapple with these facts nor amounts to anything more than an embrace of the sheer stupidity of emotionalistic irrationalism.  However, there is a fallacious conclusion some people come to in their non sequitur-based worldview.  Some might believe or say that humans matter more than products and other possessions because the latter can deteriorate, and this is a contradictory ideology and thus is logically incapable of being true, for people are also subject to decay.

People, too, can be harmed or weakened to the point of death, so it is not as if it is possible only for material possessions to lose their condition or even their very existence.  It also does not logically follow from something ceasing to exist or it being possible for it to cease to exist that it lacks value.  Of course, nothing is valuable because someone wishes it is or because their emotional perceptions would make it seem that way; all value is objectively tied to the nature of something (though there can be no anchor for this without an uncaused cause with a moral nature) or there is objectively no such thing as value, only things that are true or that exist amorally.  It is not that people are more valuable than possessions because possessions can expire, for the very same thing is true of humans.  Lasting forever is not a philosophical necessity for something to be objectively valuable, but, in Christian theology, immortality is nonetheless offered to all so that they can escape annihilation in hell (Ezekiel 18:4, Mathew 10:28).

The difference is that people are conscious beings capable of grasping the laws of logic (they, like everything else, already by necessity depend on them anyway), aligning themselves with any moral obligations that exist, and honoring the uncaused cause that directly or indirectly set human life in motion.  No, even if the Christian worldview is true, it is not the case that anything that does not last forever or last forever by default is meaningless, for not only can humans become injured or die in this life, but the very second death suffered in hell is just that: a death of the soul, its removal from existence.  The first and second deaths are integral in Christian doctrine and yet one of its central tenets is that all people have intrinsic, great value because they bear God's image--yet even animals have value and thus moral rights on the Biblical worldview (Mosaic Law emphasizes this repeatedly), and they are not even said to receive some special offer of eternal life or comprehend the same philosophical truths all people can if only they try!  Moth and rust can eat away at inanimate objects, but so much more can eat away at the bodies of human beings, and this is not what dictates whether humans are or are not valuable.

Cultural Transitions

Broad cultural transitions, for better or for worse, are frequent at a variety of scales and are impossible for one individual to ensure or prevent alone.  It has become quite common in American society fo elements of cultural relativism to be embraced, even if only selectively, insincerely, or thoughtlessly (after all, only an irrational person would be a relativist).  A grand irony of this, besides the logical impossibility of individuals and cultures making something true about reason, science, or morality just by having a feeling or sharing agreement, is that cultural relativism was not always as openly popular as it is now according to the historical record.  Logical truths are fixed by necessity and are epistemologically accessible to all people even as most people ignore them or pretend like their preferences dictate the nature of reason and not the other way around, not that a relativist could realize this or understand it fully unless they know the truth and idiotically try to reject it anyway.  With scientific matters, though sensory experiences are subjective, people in general are quick to assume that scientific laws are unaffected by personal desires even if they have never deeply thought about scientific epistemology and metaphysic.  With morality, more people are eager and willing to pretend like their personal wishes or cultural norms actually determine what is obligatory or evil.

Besides relativism being false by default, how is it a grand irony that moral relativism tied to culture is only now, as far as historical documentation suggests, enjoying a more widespread, positive reception?  Cultural changes and transitions would actually be the supreme moral error if societal relativism was true, however, for it would be the case that anything that the predominant culture (though large societies can have a multitude of conflicting, nuanced subcultures within it, making them more complicated than ideologically or behaviorally uniform cultures) opposes is evil and whatever the mainstream or majority approves of that is good.  People stupid enough to believe this is even logically possible often just think about what the ramifications are for their immediate circumstances, how if they are against something that is not culturally popular and cultural relativism was true, then they are "in the right" for believing or doing whatever is popular at the time.  However, it is not that the current cultural norms would be valid, but that it would have been invalid for culture to ever change to where it is now.  Even the slightest cultural transition would be in opposition to that which is good.

If challenging or rejecting culture was immoral, an impossibility since social constructs, subjective preferences, and consensus do not dictate truth, then it is not as if there would be different obligations 100 year ago than there are today.  In reality, it would have been evil on cultural relativism to fight the more entrenched racial prejudice in America or end gladiatoral contests in earlier civilizations, so any change away from the racist status quo, among other things, would have been itself immoral, but without the slow cultural transition away from overt white supremacy, my current society would not be as it is now.  All cultural changes, in fact, would be unjust if cultural norms or majority whims in any way make something morally valid.  Cultural relativists seem to almost never realize this, not that cultural trends or individual desires have anything to do with grounding or revealing the nature of morality or if it even exists anyway.

It is in one sense only to be expected for a cultural relativist to not realize that it would have been evil to ever shift a culture to where is now if this kind of relativism was true, of course.  Emotionalistic gratification in the present moment is all that relativists actually live for if they are as consistent as they can be in devoting themselves to the utter contradictions of relativism.  Relativism is logically impossible, but both nihilism and moral realism are logically possible, even to the point that whichever is true, the other could have been true depending on whether the uncaused cause did or did not have a moral nature respectively.  Subjectivist relativism is inherently false because subjective desires only mean that someone desires something; they do not ground or prove anything about reality beyond them.  Cultural relativism is inherently false because the whims of a majority or even the total agreement of every individual in a massive society, something that is almost never present, only means that a group of people has agreed, not that something is true or knowable.

If cultural relativism was true, though, it would mean that it would be erroneous to promote racial or gender equality, to not harm homosexuals for existing, to encourage people to speak out against workplace exploitation, and so on, all because the norm of the same cultures that might now gravitate towards the opposite more than before once did the opposite.  There would be no such thing as a legitimate cultural evolution or diversification.  To even challenge or criticize one's culture in the privacy of one's mind would be immoral.  Cultural relativists, as it turns out, only believe or assert the fallacies of relativism when it is beneficial to them.  It will almost never be the case that a cultural relativist will endorse their moral philosophy when they do not already subjectively approve of whatever dominant cultural practice or belief they are talking about.  If they sincerely cared about truth, they would not even be a relativist: they would realize that relativism/subjectivism are impossible and that whether moral nihilism or realism is true depends on metaphysical matters more foundational than morality (it would hinge on the nature of the uncaused cause), not on perception or preference.

Power In Business (Part 3): Unions

It is not just employers who have power in a business context.  The employees who work for them also have some degree of power, for without them, or if all of them refused to work, a company and its profits would deteriorate.  Alone, employees all have the power to at least have some weight, or else the employer would not need to have hired them (even overhired workers can still at least inconvenience a company, so they too have power).  If they come together to form a union to collectively fight for or maintain livable or merited pay, benefits, and working conditions, the power is enormously increased.  Yes, workers' unions are a specific manifestation of employee power, but they must be established as a group, differentiating this issue from the general subject of the previous entry in this series.  The power of unions is the power of multiple employees linked together.  In some cases, this could entail the power of a massive group of unified workers from the same industry or company, but either allows for greater strength than any one person could tend to have on their own.

A single worker can be exploited in silence.  An employer can intimidate or manipulate him or her into not bringing the matter to light, either to the other employees or to the public, and oppressing a single employee is of course easier to carry out than the oppression of a group of employees who all have the same moral and practical concern about their workplace.  When employees openly acknowledge their experiences with workplace exploitation whenever applicable (for it is not logically impossible for a company to be free of this mistreatment), and any retalitation or abuse directed towards one employee is more likely to be opposed by others, there is significant potential to ensure the right treatment of workers.  The shared connections with other workers that forms a union increases the risk to trampling on employees, as their collective standing amplifies their power to affect a business by leaving companies or making demands.

Unions can strongly deter employers from not only continuing whatever exploitative practices they might already be engaging in, but also from trying to sneakily reintroduce oppressive behaviors or policies that were already confronted or trying new methods.  A group of people has more observational capacity than one and more emotional strength to draw from.  Moreover, certain individuals might not have personalities that make it easy for them to oppose irrationality and injustice, not in the sense that they do not understand or care, but in the sense that not everyone has the same level of resolve or communication skill.  A certain kind of employer might oppress those under them and then take advantage of how some workers might refrain from doing what they can to resolve the problem. Together, employees have a better chance of securing the conditions that are objectively best for them because difficulty with confrontation or articulation is lessened when there are people of different talents to rely on.

This power of unions, like the power of employers or individual employees, can be misused or craved for petty reasons--and some unions might fall into corruption similar to that they are supposedly pushing back against in the workplace itself.  Hypocrites, egoists, and fools of all other types could be present in a given union.  This itself does not mean that unions are inherently oppressive or hypocritical as well, but if the members and leaders of a union were to so choose, even an organization like this could succumb to error.  There is, though, not a single kind of power that cannot be pursued with erroneous motivations or applied in irrational ways, so this is not unique to unions out of all the categories of people that can be present in the business world, the other groups being employers, individual employees, and consumers.  While it might not always seem like it, the last of these categories, the consumers, have major power of their own which will be addressed next.

Game Review--Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (PS4)

"This is an outrage!  I am entitled to what I want at all times."

--Karen the Coil, Tina Tina's Wonderlands

Not as emotionally insightful into Tina as Assault on Dragon Keep but still a much better game in some ways than Borderlands 3, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands offers plenty of Borderlands-style quests and gunplay.  Centered on a Dungeons & Dragons stand-in called Bunkers and Badasses, which debuted in Assault on Dragon Keep back in 2013, it follows Tina and two of her friends as they play a tabletop game to stop a Dragon Lord.  This Borderlands game features an isometric Overworld for the first time, just as melee weapons appear for the first time--you could use a default melee attack or the blade on certain firearms in previous games, but now there are fully equippable axes and swords.  Tiny Tina's Wonderlands does genuinely expand the series mechanics, and even if its core story is one of the weaker ones of the franchise, it still contains moments of very well-executed comedic dialogue.

Production Values

Explosions of color greet players throughout the approximately 20+ hours of the game, if you complete many of the side quests along the way.  This is Tiny Tina's game, after all, so of course there are explosions!  At their best, the colors and animations look great, but the details of character models and environments might fill in after several seconds of remaining close to blurry textures, an unfortunate Borderlands staple in different games.  Far more consistently high quality is the voice acting from Tina, her two fellow players (besides the player's voiceless character), and the other NPCs, some of which are characters from other games worked into Tina's tale.  At times, the writing is even very clever, circling back to what were otherwise random ideas and comments Tina made that fit her strange personality, though Borderlands 2 remains the height of the the franchise's comedy.

Gameplay

As mentioned, one of the biggest additions to the gameplay is an entire new class of weapons with melee items, some of which have their own elemental or other bonuses.  For instance, a certain kind of axe might have a vampire effect where health is stolen from every enemy struck and transferred to the player's character.  Spells also replace grenades, but magic being the source of these attacks is not the only change to this mechanic.  There is no need to collect ammunition for spells as is the case with grenades in the prior games, as they have a brief timer that resets the attack.  Some spells have more than one use before they are completely depleted, and increasing a character's intelligence stat shortens the amount of time that spells "cool down."

The new Overworld, a very novel feature for Borderlands, is shown from a top-down camera perspective, complete with unlockable shortcuts, items, and enemies.  Walking through grass might spawn one of these enemies, which can be quickly dispatched by melee attacks--if they reach you first, an Encounter is triggered, where you are taken to a small map modeled after the surrounding region of the Overworld to kill attackers until a progress bar fills up.  Special Lucky Dice made to resemble the die from Dungeons & Dragons are scattered throughout the Overworld, as well as in the first-person locations, not counting the brief Encounter arenas.  Once you enter a specific place, the typical series camera perspective and gameplay resumes, and you can teleport to the Overworld or to individual regions at any time.

The rest of the game is spent shooting, bludgeoning, exploring, or solving very mild puzzles.  The main story only has 10 quests--11 if the epilogue is included.  There are far more side quests to complete that put more of Tina's imagined Bunkers and Badasses story on display.  Completing most, not even all, of the quests the first time through will put you at level 40 before the end of the game, at which point your character will no longer level up in the main sense and will gain access to a second experience bar of sorts for your Myth Rank, which can be continually filled up far past 40 times to unlock a separate kind of skill point.  Yes, there are Hero points, skill points, and Myth points, so there are many ways to improve your character well beyond the initial stats.  Upon completing the main missions, Chaos Runs are unlocked with their Blessings, Curses, and a new currency called Moon Orbs, meaning there is still a lot to experience even after defeating the final boss.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Tiny Tina plays a game of Bunkers and Badasses with three companions, acting as the dungeon master who dictates the direction of the story.  Once defeated by Queen Butt Stallion (introduced in Borderlands 2), the antagonistic Dragon Lord has been released, using his creatures to attack Butt Stallion's city of Brighthoof and kill the queen herself.  The Dragon Lord says he knows he is in a tabletop game, and he points out that Tina is responsible for his actions as the main story unfolds.

Intellectual Content

Never going as deep into struggles with trauma and control as Assault on Dragon Keep, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands still lightly touches upon these things.  It is the case that some of the more explicitly philosophical humor and themes of, say, Borderlands 2, which Assault on Dragon Keep was DLC for, are absent.  Rather than the brilliant satire of something like fitheism found in the second game, here, the majority of the themes have to do with how Tina controls her game as dungeon master while the Dragon Lord realizes he is in a game.  At points, it is strongly suggested that this game of Bunkers and Badasses is actually happening in its own world alongside events in Tiny Tina's world, like a movie really happening as viewers watch it.  Some of the Dragon Lord's comments suggest this, and in a side quest, an NPC even flies out of the Overworld until one of Tina's fellow players says he thinks a bug flew into him.  More could have been done to explore this, but what is there does fit into the Borderlands style of meta humor.  in spite of the comedic atmosphere, the Pinocchio-inspired side quest In The Belly is a Beast is quite serious, showing yet again that even this lighthearted game series has a very dramatic, personal side.

Conclusion

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is overall a great game thanks to its mixture of gunplay, multitude of quests, and fantasy emphasis.  There is plenty to do after the story is completed, and the gameplay itself is very well-refined by this point.  While it might be appreciated more by hyper-fans of Dungeon & Dragons, anyone who likes Borderlands will have a lot to enjoy.  As a full spinoff game that is closer to conventional Borderlands than Tales From the Borderlands (and its sequel), it does succeed in providing more fittingly bizarre lore for the story within a story Bunkers and Badasses is utilized to tell.  Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is very distinct in some ways from the rest of the main series while still keeping the best gameplay elements that had already been introduced.  It is a worthy continuation of one of gaming's most unique franchises.

Conclusion:

 1.  Violence:  The typical Borderlands aesthetic style is present without the prominent blood or mild gore of the other games.  The shooting and melee attacks do not produce as much blood.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "damn" are used several times.

The Size Of The Universe

Upon seeing the vastness or transquility of a rainforest or the ocean or the starry sky, it is common for people who focus on the experience to feel one of two things: they likely either feel very important as the only kind of being they know of that appreciates the natural world as they do or they feel small or perhaps meaningless in the face of the universe.  These feelings could be rather powerful and might even spur some people on to contemplate the nature of perception, absolute certainty, scientific phenomena, and more foundational metaphysics like the laws of logic or God, shaking them out of the apathy or superficiality that characterizes most non-rationalists.  Both of these feelings, though, are nothing but emotional reactions, having nothing to do with whether humans have value or with proving or disproving such a thing.  

Not only do a person's feelings not dictate the existence or nonexistence of objective values, but it is also the case that the entirety of the universe in all of its perceived splendor does not dictate the existence or nonexistence of values.  If an ant or a tree or a human has value, it is neither because of the physical phenomena in the cosmos nor the subjective awe or appeal it inspires in some who observe or think about it.  It would not matter how large or small the universe is or how much of it humans are able to perceive.  Moreover, it could be the case that not killing every living thing one comes across is evil because destruction is morally good, and neither the universe nor the feelings within a human consciousness that perceives it would be relevant.  That would be how reality is regardless of the pragmatic consequences or how much or little comfort someone experiences towards this.

Of course, no one is forced to believe that the universe or humanity or a sense of wonder is objectively good or objectively meaningless because they feel a certain way.  Still, emotionalism and assumptions are normal parts of non-rationalistic philosophical errors.  What further makes non-rationalists idiotic beyond making assumptions (and then often resisting correction when someone else explains the truth so they do not have to initially think of it on their own) and looking to emotional persuasion rather than logical necessity is that they are almost never even consistent in living out their asinine worldviews.  Almost every person who foolishly looks at an image of a galaxy and thinks that humanity must be meaningless in light of an enormous universe (not that most things perceived with the senses can be known to exist, galaxies included) probably believes that humans should still be treated as if they are valuable--or at least when it is convenient for them to want this to be true.

It does not logically follow from the universe being of any particular size or appearance that humans do or do not have value; that is dependent on the nature of the uncaused cause that precedes the cosmos [1].  If the uncaused cause does not have a moral nature, then the universe and humanity alike are meaningless because there would only be subjective preferences for values, as well as logical truths about what follows from ideas about values.  There would not be anything that truly is meaningful or morally obligatory or objectively valuable.  If the uncaused cause has a moral nature, then whatever that nature is dictates what things in existence have value and how beings like humans should live.  The uncaused cause having a moral nature so that caring for the environment or not committing rape is obligatory means humans should fulfill these obligations even if it puts them in danger.  Inversely, if the uncaused cause has a moral nature so that killing or even torturing every living thing is obligatory, then this is what humans should do regardless of how they feel.

In no way is the universe itself or the emotional reactions that specific people have to it relevant to the existence or nature of values.  Logic dictates possibility and what does or does not follow from truths and ideas, while the moral nature or lack of it in the uncaused cause is what grounds the existence or nonexistence of objective morality, beauty, and meaning, though of course even this is constrained by the necessary truths of reason.  Observing and dwelling on nature and the extended universe--not that it is possible to even know what the universe really looks like or if there is more to the universe than the miniscule physical substance that can actually be proven to exist [2]--can indeed stir up deep existential feelings that provoke, accompany, or celebrate philosophical truths.  Only someone too stupid to avoid believing in contradictions or assumptions is not able to grasp this.  It truly is not very difficult to realize when one does not settle for assumptions, though this is so very foundational to the nature of many things.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/08/matter-is-not-illusion.html

What Public Nudity Would Facilitate

In American culture, a society where like most others, the majority of people do not look to reason to verify or falsify ideas (when possible) instead of words, traditions, appeals to authority, or subjective preference, it is ironically the political group of people who complain about the sensitivity of preference-based ideologies from liberals that can be extremely sensitive to unfamiliar ideas and truths.  Though conservatives might be rather obsessed with secretly seeing the naked body or thinking about it in a sexual way, which reflects their many hypocrisies as they distance themselves from things in some social circles while indulging in them whether or not the things is problematic in itself, they in another sense often talk and act as if they fear the human body, shunning or condemning public nudity in sexual or nonsexual contexts.

Public nudity is not supposed to be an ordinary thing in America except in a few isolated areas.  Yes, there is no excuse for believing in false ideas or fallacious grounds for true ideas, and some of these truths can be accessed with pure reason as opposed to being directly prompted by sensory experience (though they are still ultimately logical truths), but it is more unlikely that the typical person will understand certain truths about the body without that kind of experience to bring them to the point of forsaking assumptions.  All assumptions about all things can be avoided regardless of experience.  Still, the lack of exposure to the human body except in very limited contexts, some of them just in films or television or perhaps involving women instead of men, can be a factor that will slow some people's awareness of reality. 

There are multiple realizations that the general public would be more likely to have regarding the human body if only public nudity was actually more common, or somewhat normal in America at all in certain areas.  The idea of actually seeing the unclothed body might seem terrifying or offensive to some people at first, but after adjustment to a new kind of experience, or just after the initial unnecessary panic hopefully subsides, the philosophical discoveries and numerous possible benefits could easily come to light: that sensuality is not sexuality, that the male body is beautiful too, that women naturally have bodily features like leg hair often associated only with men, that there are not more than two observable genders in addition to the occasional intersex person, and perhaps more would be more regularly embraced by more people if nudity was more publicly normalized.

Conservatives are the ones most likely to oppose public nudity or even nudity in entertainment even as they tend to desperately obsess over the human body while mistaking it for something sexual.  They also are more likely to rightly reject the idea that there are more than two genders, even if sometimes with emotionalistic reasons in mind.  Paradoxically, they miss the fact that regular, normalized exposure of the human body to the public will not only give them the experiential chance to realize the logical truths about the nature of nudity that were true all along (such as how it is nonsexual but can be perceived or appreciated sexually), but will also help more people directly see that there are not more than two genders and intersex people as far as all available sensory evidence suggests--not that most of the senses even prove that there is world of matter in which there are other human bodies, of course.

The only opposition to public nudity is based on conscience or tradition or other arbitrary, subjective, or meaningless things.  When this is all that someone could believe an idea because of, that idea is at best unverifiable, with no one being justified in believing it, and at worse it is demonstrably false.  It is demonstrably true that nudity itself is nonsexual, which quickly refutes entire ideas about nudity and sexuality.  It is also demonstrably true that the Bible does not condemn it, which refutes another entire basis for anti-nudity ideology and its respective philosophical components.  It is true by logical necessity that there are even pragmatic benefits to this thing that has little to none of the characteristics its usual opponents assume it does.  Not everyone would need to participate or appreciate the sight, but no one's subjective preferences dictate logic and morality, and regular public nudity would indeed facilitate for the masses the aforementioned discoveries that would happen to make life easier for many people.

Communism And Capitalism: Neutral Until Misused

Misconceptions about economic systems abound.  Some believe that communism is inherently about laziness or creating human-made food shortages, while others believe that capitalism is inherently about exploiting the poor as if they were subhuman creatures.  Despite being intrinsically far less vital than so many other truths, the nature of economics, especially as it relates to morality and the distinction between social constructs and core aspects of reality (for all economic systems, but not logical truths about the concepts, can exist only if communities create and preserve them) is not itself trivial.  Non-rationalists are quick to support many myths about economics in the current political climate, with communism and capitalism being especially misunderstood as general or basic societal frameworks.  For instance, there is the conservative myth that communism is about glorifying or encouraging laziness, when in fact, even in the practice of non-compulsory communism, someone has to work if the community is to thrive, and any sincere thinker would not mistake a misunderstanding of communism for communism itself!  Or what of the liberal myth that it is not possible for a capitalist workplace to not be driven by classism and selfishness?

It is also fairly common to encounter straw man comments about how one of these systems or the other "inevitably" leads to starvation or misery, but not only is this not by logical necessity and thus only if they are acted upon in a certain way, but this is true of both communism and capitalism.  Of course communism can lead to starvation or death: taking resources from some to give to others could easily be used tyrannically or lead to deaths out of neglect.  This in part depends on the form of communism being implemented and how competently it is actually applied.  However, tyranny is not an inherent feature of communism, and it is one that could easily be practiced in a capitalist context as well.  Of course capitalism can also lead to starvation, artificial drought, and death: people quite literally are expected to go without food or water unless they either professionally work for money to spend on these things or have access to them in nature wholly apart from a conventional job, and circumstances beyond a person's control could suddenly interfere with their job(s) at any time.  Communism and capitalism are both neutral, at least in the Biblical standard of ethics, until they are misused because there is no single form of them that can only be based on cruelty.

It needs to be realized that Soviet Russian communism is just one of multiple possible variations of communism, and truths and ideas are what matter rather than historical applications of ideas through people and events anyway (only in the context of truths and ideas is it even possible for events to occur or have significance).  People who confuse Soviet communism for the only type of communism are inescapably looking to events instead of sheer logical proofs, which are true and knowable in a total vacuum of sensory experiences and historical information.  It is also the case that America's way of expressing capitalism is not the only way, and that the faults and philosophical errors in American capitalism are not necessarily shared in other conceptual variations of capitalism.  Communism in itself is only the communal sharing of property and capitalism in itself only entails having businesses and consumers that are supposedly free to succeed or fail based on how they react to each other.

It should be very apparent to anyone, at least with experiential/social prompting to dwell on the subject of economic justice, that there is not just one possible version of communism or capitalism and that either can be used in utterly predatory or beneficial ways.  When it comes to Biblical ethics, there are additional factors that people, on the basis of assumptions and preferences, often ignore as they pretend like they know one an economic system is evil because they dislike it.  The misrepresentation of thinking that Soviet communism is the only possible type of communism or that American capitalism is the only possible type of capitalism only feeds into this even for plenty of people who think they are thoughtful Christians.

Theological conservatives love to overlook that the early church of Acts was communist in its practices, just in a voluntary manner, and that there is nothing sinful about willingly living without individually owned property (Deuteronomy 4:2) or objecting to workplace exploitation and greed.  Theological liberals, on the contrary, might rush to ignore that theft is unjust no matter who something is stolen from (they sometimes demonize the rich through asinine stereotypes) and dismiss how every able-bodied man or woman should work under non-oppressive conditions to earn a living (2 Thessalonians 3:10).  It is just like conservatives and liberals to ignore anything that does not support their pathetic assumptions, and even then, they are quick to misunderstand the random ideas they hold to.  One of their many ironies is that they do not even understand communism and capitalism as they exaggerate the philosophical importance of economics to begin with and base other parts of their worldview around economic misconceptions in a thorough denial of reason.

Movie Review--Silent Hill

"Only the dark one opens and closes the door to Silent Hill."

--Dahlia Gillespie, Silent Hill

Silent Hill manages to be the overlapping rare examples of a film where Sean Bean does not die and a video game adaptation is actually handled very well in cinematic form mostly because of its aesthetic and effects.  The franchise of Silent Hill has also lent itself in general to examining metaphysics and epistemology with a special focus on morality and psychology, which of course helps deepen the themes of any film.  Not everything is perfect despite this.  Some of the minor side characters do not have the same performances behind them as Rose and Chris Da Silva.  Sometimes a longer runtime would have avoided rushing some plot points.  The dialogue is very weak at its worst.  This next part has to do with things beyond the movie and not the movie itself, but though the movie is somewhat groundbreaking in its portrayal of female leads in a 2006 video game film, the absolute stupidity of the director in both believing in gender stereotypes at all and only not picking a male lead because men are allegedly not supposed to be "vulnerable" means Silent Hill is yet another movie with idiocy that shaped its development behind the camera.  The quality of the movie itself is unaffected by this since this has to do with the philosophical mistakes of the director and not the execution or production values, but it does taint the man who helmed this project.  The majority of the film still stands as a monument to how to translate the atmosphere of a game to a film and how to utilize visual uniqueness.

Production Values

A very strong visual atmosphere, great creature design, and competent cinematography are the defining traits of the movie.  Less than 20 minutes in, the sirens of Silent Hill are already blaring after Rose Da Silva has entered the town, and some of the bizarre entities of the Otherworld begin to make appearances.  The ashes and fog of the Fog World, as it is called online, have already been seen before this transformation into the more desolate dimension first comes.  When the Fog World gives way to the Otherworld, additional beings like Pyramid Head can manifest, and parts with these two dimensions are often the best of the film due to the superb visual representation of Silent Hill.  There are few horror movies that reach this level of success in the aesthetic tone.  With some exceptions, unfortunately, the cast and dialogue largely does not live up to the quality of the atmosphere and effects.  Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean are by far the best performers here as Mrs. and Mr. Da Silva, though the latter only has smaller, scattered scenes.  Bean and Mitchell out-act almost everyone else in the move but are followed by Deborah Kara Unger as Dahlia Gillespie with her limited screentime.  Laurie Holden also does alright with her character Cybil Bennett, the police officer transplanted from the first video game, but she does not give as strong a performance as the Da Silvas receive.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Rose and Chris Da Silva do not have the easier parenting roles.  Their daughter Sharon has had repeated sleepwalking incidents where she talks about a place called Silent Hill, and in the most recent case, she almost killed herself. The child's mother Rose decides to take Sharon to visit the West Virginia town of Silent Hill without even letting Chris know, but a bizarre car accident leaves her unconscious long enough for Sharon to go missing.  Upon waking, Rose observes an unexpected location.  Ashes fall from the sky; sudden siren blasts usher in a metaphysical transformation of the townscape.  Rose thus begins her exploration of a town that is diseased by traumatic abuse and its aftermath.

Intellectual Content

The metaphysical abnormalities of the Otherworld as compared to the normal world are ultimately the result of strife between a young girl hated because she was born outside of marriage and a religious cult whose leader is named Christabella.  The cult at times quotes the Bible and at times says or does things so utterly opposed to Christian theology that even a cursory examination of Biblical ethics and general metaphysics would reveal how incompetent they are at Biblical analysis.  Among the multiple Bible verses that are seem in writing or spoken aloud is a passage from Revelation that Christabella and her followers likely cite because of their beliefs that they have averted an apocalypse, with the "demon" at the heart of the troubles for the congregation being the same girl named Alessa they victimized years before.  While the cult heinously misunderstood Biblical ideas to treat Alessa as they did, it is not as if Alessa's ultimate reaction is one of justice, but there are other things Christabella errs in as well.

Hating or in any way punitively treating a child for its parents' actions is completely idiotic because the actions of a person are theirs alone, unless they are literally having their consciousness hijacked by another conscious being.  Christabella holds to errors beyond this such as that expressed when she says "Faith is the only truth."  Faith is not even a truth itself, but a type of basis for belief--or a commitment better referred to by the word faithfulness than faith.  In the sense of belief, faith is inherently irrational (and not at all what the Bible refers to when it prescribes faith, as that is the faithfulness of commitment) because it is just assumptions: regardless of what the object of faith is, be it something true or false, be it science, religious theology, or anything else, epistemological faith is irrational.  This is what makes faith in reason impossible for rationalists.  The laws of logic are necessary truths that could not be false, cannot change, and could not have been different, making them absolutely certain and more central than anything else to reality.  There is no faith in rationalism.

There is also nothing rational about Alessa's emotionalistic rampage at the end of the film.  There is even a specifically sexual connotation to her torturous killing of Christabella when the cultist asks God to keep her pure before Alessa telekinetically shoves razor wires into her vagina.  Alessa is not anything more than an emotionalistic, cruel imbecile; even aside from things like the intentionally sexual aspect to her torture of Christabella, she would not be a being of justice as the ending scene tries to portray her as simply because her aim is to satisfy her emotional longing for revenge, not to avoid over-punishing people.  Alessa is at least as much a villain as the cultists she despises and in some ways even moreso.  Conscience and emotionalism, as I love to dwell on due to how inescapably foundational this truth is, are not only epistemologically invalid for revealing moral obligations, but they also very easily drive people who thinks themselves "kind" or "just" to commit acts of extreme degradation and torture if they feel a strong enough inclination.  Of course, it is always their own meaningless, subjective feelings they think are epistemological beacons, not those of the other people they target!  In this way, basing moralism on conscience results so often, when people are given the chance to truly act on it, in the greatest cruelties, things that rival the deeds of those who started out sadistic and apathetic towards moral concepts.

Conclusion

There have been few video game movies I have seen that were not affronts to serious art.  In spite of its dialogue needing to be bolstered, Silent Hill rises far above this trend because of its incredible visual style alone and ascends higher because it does tackle some significant themes even if, as is almost always the case, the characters are idiots and hypocrites who are far from rationalism, self-awareness, and justice.  It helps that its cast for the Da Silva spouses is genuinely good.  If only every other cast member was this excellent!  The core strength of Silent Hill is not the cast, though.  Very rarely is the atmosphere/tone of entertainment so strong on its own that it lifts the overall work up even though there are glaring flaws in other aspects.  Had it offered nothing else of quality like the performances of Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean, this part of Silent Hill would still hold up the film thanks to an atmosphere superior to that of all but a few horror movies from its decade.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Mutilations, corpses, and acts of torture and killing are shown.  A scene near the very end with barbed wire has many people get pulled apart, penetrated, or entangled in the wire.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck," "shit," and "damn" are used a handful of times.

 3.  Nudity:  Exposed genitalia on a male corpse hanging upside down can be very briefly seen in a shot.  Later, Pyramid Head pulls off a woman's clothing before pulling off her skin in the same manner right after.

Cursing One's Parents

Exodus 21:17 directly says as unambiguously as language can make it that cursing one's parents deserves death, and not the eventual biological death that comes about naturally as one grows older, but execution by other people.  It does not give explicit clarification about what it means by cursing one's parents, though, and despite this verse being overlooked for a variety of reasons (most Christians assume the Old Testament is something other than the absolute core of Christianity, much more so than anything in the New Testament could possibly be), what this cursing is has major ramifications for justice, since this act is a capital offense.  A similar condemnation of blasphemy against God in Leviticus 24:16 provides some possible illumination, but there are many Christians who might think that to use profanity towards one's parents qualifies as this kind of cursing.

They believe in the fallacious idea that because using profanity is today sometimes called cursing, using profanity directed towards one's parents is the same as what Exodus 21:17 means by cursing one's mother or father.  Like the capital sin of blasphemy, another verbal offense, cursing one's parents is a capital sin, but just as exclaiming "goddamn" is not the sin of blasphemy, saying something like "damn/fuck my parents" is not what seems to be condemned.  Not only is profanity itself totally nonsinful unless it is used to intentionally degrade someone when directed at them in a particular way (Deuteronomy 4:2), with saying "damn you" to or about someone not necessarily being dehumanizing, but it is also true that just because using profanity is called cursing does not mean this is what the author of Exodus had in mind when they wrote Exodus 21:17.  Besides sheer stupidity, there is a prominent reason why an evangelicals parent might want to assume that it is indeed what the author meant.

Of course some Christian parents might like it if Exodus 21:17 was referring to this, because many of them are legalistic emotionalists who want as much power over their children as they can get in certain areas, and so even if they do not wrongly want children to be put to death for directing profanity at them, they like the thought of it being inherently wrong to "curse" at them because it makes them feel offended.  Of course, the text of Exodus 21:17 does not include anything about profanity specifically, and cursing at someone is not the same as cursing them.  Blasphemy is similarly misidentified as using profanity in the manner of "goddamn," but in this case, the direct comments in Leviticus 24:10-16 clarify that it is malicious words against God that constitute blasphemy, not using profanity alongside the word for the category of being God is, with God not being a name in itself (and thus is not the same as taking God's name in vain).

Beyond what cursing one's parents is, which is likely just a malicious, unjust sort of statement, another factor relevant to this overall issue is that parents and family members in general are not deserving of special love or respect by default, and it follows from this that they, like other people, might not deserve to not have profanity directed at them if they are irrationalistic, selfish, or abusive, even if using profanity in this way is not morally required in response.  Beyond their status as having human rights as bearers of God's image, even within Christianity, a person's family members are no better or worse than their worldviews and moral alignments make them, and the Bible repeatedly calls for recognizing what one can about people as they are, not as one wishes they were.  It is idiotic to excuse the sins of family members because they are family, and just as one could aggressively speak of family as long as it is accurate, there is no indication that one cannot use profanity when doing so.

Verbal sins are for whatever reason in one of the categories most prone to be misinterpreted by evangelicals.  With sins like kidnapping or murder, evangelicals might acknowledge the Biblical passages addressing them but then either push back against the divinely commanded penalties for them or pretend like there are random exceptions.  With sexual sins, it is prudery and a submission to tradition that keeps evangelicals from understanding what is and is not condemned, and there is a great tendency to think that some personally or culturally controversial thing is being condemned (such as mistakenly thinking that a married person masturbating to someone else they are not married to is adultery when this cannot be true).  When it comes to verbal sins, though, like with sexual immorality and injustice, they are almost universally quick to assume that the Bible must mean by things like unclean speech or cursing God or one's parents exactly what the Christians of their day would mean, when the concepts could wildly differ.

Is The Xenomorph Lovecraftian?

With its acid blood and extreme aggression, the xenomorph of the Alien franchise is a lethal hunter, and one that cannot safely be stopped aboard a vessel in space just by using bullets, as its blood could dissolve the structure of the ship and doom the human passengers.  Its aesthetic uniqueness and menacing nature combined with its role in a story set in outer space have led some people to call the xenomorph and its franchise Lovecraftian.  The enigmatic introduction of the xenomorph, the way that it threatens human survival if the right events were to occur, and the science fiction setting all have been misidentified as markers of inherent cosmic horror in Alien.  Cosmic horror is not just about mystery and human vulnerability, though, so this would not make the 1979 movie Lovecraftian just by featuring these aspects.  In actuality, it is the prequel Prometheus that directly dives into Lovecraftian themes despite none of the multiple alien types of the film resemble the likes of Cthulhu or Azathoth.

The Engineers of Prometheus are certainly Lovecraftian in their thematic use, but even they are not representative of conventional cosmic horror monsters.  The image of a xenomorph seen in one of the Engineer rooms indicates that there is some sort of connection of this race to the titular alien of the franchise, though this might just mean that the Engineers stumbled upon the species and have a history of observing them or using them as effective but disposable weapons of war.  At most, the function of the Engineers as an ancient species preceding humans that is tied to the grand philosophical issue of human origins certainly relates to cosmic horror territory, but this does nothing to make the xenomorphs in themselves Lovecraftian.  Also, since Prometheus is a prequel released many years after Alien, people who watched the original film long ago and initially thought it was Lovecraftian would not have had Prometheus to present the xenomorph in the context of a more Lovecraftian cosmic horror light.

The xenomorph on its own is absolutely not Lovecraftian, however.  A relatively small animal that seems to just be another species that does not in any way seem to care about the deepest parts of reality is in no way anything more than loosely similar to a Lovecraftian entity in that both are nonhuman entities, as the eldritch beings of Lovecraft's "pantheon" might span dimensions, transcend the laws of nature (but not the laws of logic, the only thing no part of reality even in fiction can actually contradict!), engage in telepathic communication, and so on.  The xenomorph does not even have these characteristics in the slightest way!  For all of its potential to exterminate most of humankind if it was relocated to Earth, this extraterrestrial animal has nowhere near the power of Lovecraftian entities nor the same degree of inherently existential thematic foundation.

The xenomorph can be utilized to provoke terror that could then easily lead someone to think about cosmic horror, humanity's standing in the natural world and in the broader metaphysical hierarchy, and the kind of deeper metaphysics, epistemology, and existentialism that Lovecraftian cosmic horror centers on, but the beast itself, as dangerous as it is, does not even inherently connect with the themes of the Lovecraftian subgenre.  The xenomorph itself is just that: a violent beast that happens to be better equipped than many creatures to overpower prey or resist standard means of human defense, even if the sexual horror elements of its life stages do help distinguish it from other monsters of entertainment.  This does not mean that some aspects of the original Alien or Prometheus or Alien: Covenant do not directly or incidentally overlap with cosmic horror at some point, but the Alien film that is explicitly, consistently Lovecraftian is the one that does not even feature the main xenomorph at all, just a xenomorph-like animal in the very last few shots.

The Dramatically Exaggerated Explicitness Of Entertainment

Different works of entertainment in literary, cinematic, or gaming format can have varying stories, themes, and even, on the part of the creator, intentions behind the work.  Along with such differences comes darker and lighter entertainment, some of which is far darker or lighter than others.  One of the many things that Christian legalists object to despite Biblical ethics not prohibiting it whatsoever is entertainment that either portrays certain sins (which they almost invariably are selective about objecting to, as if seeing some sins onscreen is evil but not others) or that just portrays certain categories of human behaviors, sinful or not, such as sexual actions.  The Bible itself would far outdo anything I have ever seen or played in terms of violence or sexual content--and I am talking about it having actual violence, not just the quick, painless murders so many people refer to when they use the word.  As they believe the opposite of what Deuteronomy 4:2 requires and somehow forget that the Bible would be very graphic if it was faithfully depicted in a visual format, evangelical legalists, some of them parents pretending like concern for children makes errors and subjectivism valid, leap into the irrationality of hypocrisy.

Films, television shows, and video games will usually receive more backlash than literature on such legalistic grounds because you can see events unfold.  However, they have one general trait in common besides all being visual artistic mediums: the vast, vast majority of all works in these mediums familiar to the public are so very tame compared to what legalistic Christians, conscience-driven secularists, and emotionalistic parents like to assert.  Very few works of entertainment in any genre or medium are truly very intense in their portrayals of these things in the sense of making them graphic--and that is not positive nor negative, nor is it artistically/philosophically excellent or not, in itself.  It is simply that onscreen violence almost always falls far short of what it would actually be like in person even in something like Game of Thrones or Saw.  Sexual content even onscreen is almost always not even shown directly, and sexual or nonsexual nudity is almost never fully, directly portrayed either.

Not even something like Game of Thrones is truly very explicit with many of its depictions of sexuality and violence compared to what it could have been like, as it just looks so much more explicit by comparison to other art without actually even having an unflinching camera or being as graphic in any regard as it truly could.  Other art is just so relatively tame that Game of Thrones is overwhelming for some people when it comes to this kind of content.  Yes, the show is genuinely dark, but there are many ways it could have been far more graphic.  The same is true of Saw's violence.  This series is objectively violent, but still very mild by comparison to what it could have been, though it is far more graphic than many other films by default because the others tend to not be graphic at all.

Video games make violence more immersive in one sense because of player input while also making it less realistic when bodies and blood instantly or almost instantly vanish from the digital realm.  Because of the latter aspect of most games or the fact that many times the blood and gore is still fairly mild, not even the only artistic medium that has viewers actively control events is truly home to content as graphically violent as many seem to think.  The likes of God of War, Ninja Gaiden, and Call of Duty are thus limited in the scope of their violence or the aftermath of it by this one gaming norm alone.  What, then, of something like nudity that could be sexual or nonsexual and yet is shunned by legalists in almost any context (though the Bible is both not opposed to it and actively supportive of nudity)?

Nudity is an objectively nonsexual thing that sometimes is perceived or acted upon in a sexual way, so games, films, or shows that regularly portray nudity would not actually qualify as sexually explicit even if they went so far as to show full nudity for consecutive hours.  However, there is far more implied nudity in entertainment than nudity portrayed onscreen.  It is more often the case that genitalia or, in the case of women, breasts are strategically blurred or concealed using everything from environmental objects to camera angles.  Even when nudity is directly shown, it is not always as frequent in sexual or nonsexual contexts as some people pretend.  Not even Game of Thrones actually has as much nudity as is usually claimed, as it just has more than most other art, though not all of it is sexual in context anyway.  Hell, even the erotic horror games Lust for Darkness and Agony, the first of which has a version rated Adults Only and the second of which has an unrated version (and both of which I reviewed the Switch versions of back in 2020), have less nudity in the case of the former and less sexual content in the case of the latter (despite an abundance of naked bodies that fit perfectly with the atmosphere of the game) than their reputations might suggest.

No one needs to watch, read, or play art of these kinds if they do not want to.  Nor does Christian morality as the Bible itself teaches condemn people for being drawn to darker, more sexually explicit, or more violent entertainment, with these three things not always overlapping whatsoever.  In addition to this, not all art needs to be fiercely graphic or not intense at all when it comes to things like violence or sexuality--nudity is the most mild of the categories discussed here and is not even a subcategory of sexuality, though it can be sexually appreciated and acted upon.  The points elaborated upon merely connect with the fact that beyond the utter stupidity of thinking Biblical morality condemns violence or sexuality in art, most of the things people object to in art are not even as intense or graphic as they believe.  Perhaps they are not used to such content or are personally sensitive to it, but there are very few works of entertainment in any medium that are more than minimally explicit by comparison to the true spectrum of such things.  Indeed, the spectrum does go on forever from the fixed starting point of having no explicit content, for its presence on art could always be slightly more graphic or prolonged, or than it is, yet so many Christians mistakenly think that almost anything regarding violence or sexuality is "explicit."  This is logically impossible.

Violence Against Men

It does not matter, according to ideas that American culture as a whole even now clings to, if violence is inflicted on a man by a man or woman or if it occurred in a context of self-defense or not.  Physically attacking men even in an open manner in front of witnesses is societally regarded, at least for a great deal of American history, as a lesser offense than attacking women, even if the women are physical aggressors and if the men being victimized did not even do anything to call for self-defense (of course, the moral issues with assault or battery would still apply even if a man "provokes" someone into wanting to strike them).  In fact, many people, some of them idiots who actually think themselves gender egalitarian, will directly defend this despite the inherent hypocrisy and stupidity of it because broad society has so far encouraged it and because there can be cultural advantages for fools to be irrational and hypocritical.

If someone has the right personality, be they a man or woman, they want to exploit societal biases against men for their own benefit even if they themselves are hurt in the process--and all stereotypes and hypocritical treatment of men or women hurts both genders in some way, though different examples would hurt either men or women more.  Despite almost everyone's insistence that they really do care about reason, truth, and fairness, the tendency is for people to make assumptions about other people based on their gender, race, size, age, or some other such factor without regard for the stupidity of making assumptions or the way that this inevitably leads to positive or negative beliefs/attitudes about people without any valid basis.

Why might various adults want to promote belief in stereotypes that are so easily refuted with reason alone, independent of all social experience (though social experience also contributes to another proof that gender stereotypes are false, that being that literally no man or woman would act differently from other men or women if there actually were gender-specific psychological traits)?  A certain kind of man hopes to feel better about his own insecurities or is motivated by sheer arrogance or sadism and realizes that it is societally permissible, as far as cultural norms and not truth or morality are concerned, to emotionally, physically, and sexually abuse men because men supposedly "do not care," "deserve it," "cannot be abused," and so on.  He can oppress other men to make himself feel better about himself while pretending like social approval or apathy means this must be fine.

A certain kind of woman hopes to also make herself feel better by oppressing men, liking the idea that she can physically or sexually abuse men, even if it is only as relatively mild as a single public blow that goes unopposed, without having almost anyone push back against this behavior.  Like the kind of man described above, she is selfish, hypocritical, sexist, and driven by assumptions or the petty desire to do whatever it takes to emotionalistically satisfy herself.  Also like this kind of man, she recognizes that there will be a fairly small amount of public opposition if she targets men, hoping either to make them feel guilty about defending themselves or punishing her or to frighten them into just accepting arbitrary violence against them because society will likely not care as much as it would if he was a woman.

Regardless of their gender, a person must believe in the fallacies of egoism and sexism in order to have this worldview and lifestyle, or at the very least they must ignore any obvious philosophical flaws with this for the sake of making themselves feel more content to not change anything about themselves.  Since the men and women who exploit this erroneous stereotype that men deserve or can "take" violence are stupid and likely trying to make themselves feel powerful by fitting into Western culture, not only is confronting and refuting them necessary, of course, but it is also helpful to mock and belittle them whenever there is a chance to slip the verbal or emotional knife in their back without actually doing/saying anything unjust in the process.  There is no malice, pettiness, or hypocrisy in this alone.  If they are cruel to anyone because of their gender, man or woman, they do not deserve to not be hated, ostracized, and made to feel pathetically irrational to the point of voluntarily retreating from social interactions in insecurity.

The Capacity For Creation

The very first chapter of the Bible states that God created humankind in his own image, though it does not clarify the details of whatever that means.  If God is conscious, and humans are conscious, and one's own consciousness is one of the only self-evident truths there could be, then this at least is a significant similarity between God and his  human creations.  With consciousness comes the possibility of everything from introspection to emotional experience to relationships with other conscious beings, and, again, these would be major similarities between the Biblical deity and humans.  God and humanity can grasp the necessary truths of reason, have multifaceted components of their personalities, and desire companionship.  Both God and humanity also have the capacity to create.

Since the uncaused cause is the supreme creator, and on the Christian worldview, humans are gifted with the special status of bearing God's image--the only kind of being said to have this in the entire Bible--it is in one sense very natural that humans would also gravitate towards creation of their own.  Directly or indirectly, God is responsible for humans coming into existence with their own ability to create.  More than just a capacity, almost every individual person either has to create throughout their life just to complete practical tasks or will seek out the stimulation or self-expression of creation.  There are many reasons why someone might want to create, such as out of boredom, a longing for fame, or out of simple curiosity, but creation is far from a small part of human existence.

No one can create the necessary truths of logic, for they are fixed and could not have been any other way.  When either God or humans create, it is some physical or immaterial thing which is logically possible that is brought into being.  Even then, there are still so many possible ways to combine or reconfigure aspects of the natural world alone, just on this planet itself, that there are enough avenues of creation to last a person's entire lifetime without them having ever exhausted all of these potential creations.  Some of the existentially highest and increasingly relevant types of creative expression are art and artificial intelligence.  Each of these has become more prominent or developed due to benefitting from a series of previous technological creations, and there seem to be many more innovations on the horizon.

Regarding artificial intelligence, it is unknown if it is scientifically possible (it would at least be logically possible if scientific laws were different than they are now) to arrange a set of electronic parts so that they bring forth immaterial consciousness, and we could never know if this had occurred because a non-telepathic being can only see the outward actions of a machine.  It is impossible to know outward perceptions if a machine is truly conscious or just acting as if it is, like an inanimate wind-up toy.  However, if humans did succeed in creating artificial consciousness despite being incapable of knowing it, in turn, AI with the right physical frame for its consciousness to reside in would be capable on furthering the chain of creation: a machine, sentient or not, can invent and arrange material objects just as humans can. 

The triumphs of technology would have led to humans creating something in their own image with its own capacity to create, not unlike how the Bible describes God as fashioning humans in his image.  Creation can birth creation.  Even now, humans can experience their own creativity and realize due to reason and introspection how this kind of act can be an immensely potent expression of autonomy, individuality, emotion, and devotion to truth (people can create to honor abstract necessary truths about logical possibility, God's nature, or their own metaphysical status as individual persons).  Each specific act of creation reflects something of the uncaused cause's characteristics when it began the causal chain, as well as something of the human creator's nature as a human and an individual.

Movie Review--Monster Hunter

"It is said that the Ancients knew how to travel between both worlds.  I believe that is the purpose of the Sky Tower."

--The Admiral, Monster Hunter

What if the multiple scenes of monstrous creatures attacking humans in Peter Jackson's King Kong were edited poorly, given no thematic or narrative context to provide depth, not accompanied by strong characters, and stretched out to fill more of a standard film runtime?  The abysmal 2020 movie adaptation Monster Hunter is what could be made if this was the creation process.  Inferior in almost every way to the 2018 Tomb Raider film reboot and the earlier Silent Hill film that exemplified how video game film adaptations do not have to be terrible, though anyone can understand that it does not logically follow from being a game adaptation that a movie is by necessity terrible, Monster Hunter in no way translates the artistic depth of the video games into the cinematic format, but it does manage to avoid quality worldbuilding and forgo any more substantial themes.  Hell, it does not even have good editing.  The camera rapidly cuts to and fro during the fight sequences that should be the highlight of a movie like this even if all else is squandered.

Production Values

Yes, there are flickers of great cinematography and use of color in scenes like one where Milla Jovovich's Artemis wanders through an underground nest of spider-like creatures with a red flare that contrasts with the dark colors and shadows around her, or a shot where Artemis and her companion Hunter stumble upon a group of creatures that look like dinosaurs at an area with water and vegetation.  Some of the monsters themselves also are well-designed as movie versions of gaming icons.  A handful of good shots and the design of a few monsters just does not make a movie good as a whole when there is far more to that movie and the rest is not handled well.  Milla Jovovich, wife of director Paul W.S. Anderson, has the lead role as Artemis, and not even her marriage to the writer and director secured her better lines than the pitiful or very limited ones she is given.  However, she does embrace the physicality of her role with talent, not that the quick camera cuts really showcase this like they could have.  For other reasons, Tony Jaa is the top cast member here because he has to act without speaking in English most of the time while still conveying caution and then friendliness, and he actually does a great job.  He is the best performer here by far given his skill and the task he has.  Almost every other character is just a plot device.  Meagan Good from Shazam! is here--but not for long despite doing alright with her minimal role.  Ron Perlman of all people also makes an appearance.  His costume does not look the most authentic as part of a production with millions of dollars behind it in yet another problem, but Ron Perlman's acting is not an atrocity like so much of the rest of the movie.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A group of American soldiers are teleported from Earth to another dimension when a storm overtakes them and strange runes activate.  Very quickly, the soldiers and their leader Artemis find themselves attacked by an enormous creature and other monsters resembling spiders.  Artemis outlives the entire team, or at least they are not shown to survive, only to find a local man whom she at first attacks, but soon befriends after they come to see each other as allies against the monsters.  The duo devises a plan to defeat the giant animal that first attacked Artemis and her soldiers: use a trap to ensnare one of the spider-esque beings, take its poison, and use it to weaken the Diablos, as the local calls it.  She then tries to reach a distant tower that might have the power to transport her back to her homeworld.

Intellectual Content

The genuine truth behind a quote at the beginning saying that it is logically possible that there are entire dimensions, worlds, or even universes that human senses do not even begin to perceive (though most sensory perceptions do not even prove that the objects and environments we do perceive actually exist) is only briefly alluded to at this beginning screen to make Monster Hunter seem deeper than it is, which is not at all.  At least the games can have deep gameplay, rewards for killing monsters, and lore that is not butchered for just another attempt for Paul W.S. Anderson to star his wife in terrible video game adaptation he directs.  A better movie could have done far more even with the thematic premise of the story here.  I will, though, give Monster Hunter credit for establishing a platonic relationship between Milla Jovovich's character and Tony Jaa's even if the characters are not explored enough to celebrate this thoroughly.

Conclusion

Paul W.S. Anderson has made better films than this already with Event Horizon and Alien vs. Predator--the first one, not its horrendous sequel, just to clarify.  For some reason, he insists on directing movies based on video games without the talent or care needed to actually make them good.  Monster Hunter is not near the uppermost quality of his better films, but it does highlight some major flaws video game movies need to avoid with its lack of smooth, long takes of well-choreographed action and its absence of deep characterization and developed philosophical themes.  I aim to play more Monster Hunter games soon, and hopefully they tend to be better than this project that amounts largely to an abomination of an attempt to make more money from an established intellectual property, just in a new market.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A fairly bloodless movie despite the violence of the concept in the premise, Monster Hunter does show a few people getting thrown around or eaten by monsters in non-graphic ways.  Small spider-like creatures break out of cysts on a man's side in one scene.  In another, a creature burns from the inside out.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit," "damn," and "bastard" are used sparingly.