I think the difference in the Victor Kemmings' views of the past in the Frozen Journey are interesting because of how vastly different they are while both still being entirely possible.
In the beginning of the Frozen Journey Kemmings has a very positive view of the past, remembering only the best parts. In psychology this is called rosy retrospection, basically meaning that you remember and talk events from the past more favorably than they actually were. Later he remembers everything that went wrong and it taints his memories (the house falls about and the whole memory becomes dramatically depressing). Both of these ways of recalling memories are recognized in psychology.
Right now psychologists aren't totally sure what causes these ways of remembering memories, but one main theory has to do with implicit theories. They believe that before an event happens you decided how it might turn out (think a spring break trip you think will be awesome) and with this idea in mind when you look back at the event you fail to recall the neutral moment and only remember those that proved or took down your theory. If the event you remember go along with your prediction you'll remember the whole trip with rosy retrospection, On the other hand if an event happens that causes you to be wrong you'll remember the whole trip as terrible.
Psychologists ideas of how this effects people's future also matches up with what happened in the story pretty well. The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology states "Rosy mechanisms may help to explain why people often seem to repeat the mistakes of the past... [rosy retrospection] may suggest some reasons or circumstances where people learn less from experience than they could or should. Constantly rewriting the past in a favorable light may mean we don’t adjust to the demands of the future.” I think this idea can be seen with the bird because it is an event he forgot about or at least had altered in his mind to not be as bad (rosy retrospection) that keeps replaying itself in other memories in different forms.
Another part of psychology that I see play out in this story is dampening, the tendency to think of current or recent events as less favorable and pleasurable than they really are. This can be seen in all of his later memories, which to him seem to be current events. It is exaggerated in this story because, since he can alter his memories, when he starts thinking of the memory as bad it actually starts to become terrible (ie the house falling apart).
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Monolith
The monolith shows up three times in the "2001: a space odyssey": with the apes, with the astronauts, and at the very end. In the beginning I thought that it was causing the evolution, but as I continued to watch I grew to believe that it was just there to observe not only evolution, but also rise of a new dominant species.
When the monolith shows up the first time it is when the apes first learn to use weapons. This puts that group of apes above all the others, allowing them to fight and win. Later it shows up again right before we first see HAL. While HAL ended up being destroyed at the time it was created it was thought that it would grow to be the next big thing and HAL did try to take over and beome the next dominant race. Finally it shows up tight before the birth of the star baby, which I assume is better than humans as it is shown as being literally above the people on earth.
I don't think that the monolith was causing the evolution for the first two because it never moved or talked, so I don't think there was anyway for it to communicate and help the species evolve.I also think that if it had caused the evolution HAL would not have failed.
I do on the other hand think that there is an argument to be made that the monolith caused the final k evolution. I think that the monolith would have had reason to do this because the previous step in evolution (HAL) had failed, so if the monolith really was there to watch the evolutions (and maybe even check to make sure that they happened) it could have been angry that there wasn't a new species and want to create one.
One thing that really points to this to me is the holding tank like feel of the room at the end of the movie. To me the room doesn't look like a home, but instead a place where he is being kept. This could be because it is supposed to look futuristic, but we are never shown an exit, all the rooms are the same, and his way out, the ship, disappears which makes it seem like he's not supposed to leave. It could be that somebody/something else is holding him there, but the monolith seems to have the reason and did show up there.
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