Day 32 : Goodness v/s Hal 9000

Of late I've become more conscious of the concentration Sci-Fi genre in pop culture. It always there yes, but mainly was cornered in a handful of bookshelves in a niche store. Now they are mainstream - Interstellar to name recent entry to this category – and encouraging a lot more cerebral discussions over the whole final frontier adventures. 

Science fiction consists of spaceships, astronauts, unknown planets in strange galaxies habituated with people who are in a lot many ways different from us. In the earlier works, I've only read a few I confess, mostly contained the alien race having limbs and bodies like ours; only they were infinitely advanced than us both psychologically and technologically. The later works, Avatar as an example, brought the hive-mind, or specie made of light or specie that is pure oxygen with no limbs as such. All these beings are a strong race and we were the weaker ones. They were the dominant ones, we were either subservient or defiant. In some books that started off all lovey-dovey between the races, the our tendency of greed and manipulation comes into action and thus spoil all the fun for the rest of mankind. There inevitably is a war in almost all of these books.

This movie still gives me the goosebumps

But there is also one thing common in these books. Our belief for the unknown, and our distrust in our own self. We are so convinced of the evil in each human being that writing a book without it showing up is a treason of sorts. There is always a character like Matt Damon's, or the Hal 9000, who comes in with an animalistic hunger for survival or the old familiar combination of greed and ego an causes the cause the conflicts in the story. Goes to show how much high regard he hold for our own specie.

This guy slyly lays out his master plan, the hero plays right into his trap, there is a grand battle between them, the villain almost wins and starts his victory speech; without his knowing that the hero is back on his feet and ready to kick his butt to smithereens. Happens every time. Most often the thing that gives strength to the hero is also something that is essentially a humane trait - like friendship, courage, love, faith, kindness.

You see, no matter how many times these books or movies bash humanity for its pithy ego, greed, spite and lechery; they always come back to our own basic emotions to be named as the savior of the day. Because in the end, we all want to believe that the good in us will conquer all evil. No matter how tough the urge is do harm, our tendency to care for our fellow brethren will overcome. 

I believe this faith that we have in each other is one the main reasons that we have survived for as long as we have on this planet. There have been innumerable evil and vile tragedies around the world, still happening, but our capacity to care for each other has helped us through it all. A few bad apples did not make the whole basket rotten.

Today, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."