MindWalk (1990)

It seems that each of the three characters in this movie is having a crisis of perspective which comes from being wrapped up in their own views. They are so wrapped up in fact that they cannot see that their views are incomplete. Tom hardly ever speaks, I mean really speaks. He’s content to write poetry and keep his thoughts, his true self, to himself. It comes off confusing to me the viewer during the first part of the movie. We hear his thoughts, but he doesn’t speak. They seem disassociated from what he is attempting to portray. Jack is so wrapped up in trying to find the right piece to solve the puzzle to him becoming president he doesn’t see how all of the pieces are related, interconnected. Sonia can see the forest, as it were, but can’t see the leaves. She sees the systems that make up the world, but can’t see the intricacies within that system, notably her daughter. By the end of the movie, they have all gone through a “turning point”. None of them, no matter how learned, or how seemingly flexible, was able to escape this learning opportunity without having gained something. They discovered a new perspective.

The movie speaks about a Clock Model of the Cosmos. This is not unlike Alan Watts “Fully Automatic” Model of the Cosmos which he contrasts with the “Ceramic Model” in the “the Nature of Consciousness” in which we remove the Law Maker, but we kept the law. We tend to think of all the events of the cosmos as responding to the laws of cosmos. We didn’t need an architect of some grand scheme in order for us to engage in science and prophecy. So we looked at the past and made predictions on the future. The universe is now a mechanism in this case. Newtonion thought suggests that the cosmos and life itself is a bunch of billiard balls banging around in chance patterns that have become, by fluke, humans, plants, animals, etc. Alan Watts explains that the thought is that “ in order to keep our nature we must “impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it”. In a similar way Sonia quotes Francis Bacon saying “’...that Nature had to be hounded in her wandering, bound into service, made a slave’. He even said that scientists with their new mechanical devices, had to torture Nature's secrets out of her.’”

The thing is that this is not new. The idea that we need a new paradigm in which to view the cosmos is not new. We know this. Sonia’s systems theory works. Alan Watts Theory of A Drama, or a Game works, but the theories that they both suggest don’t have any wide appeal to the masses. It only comes to those who seem to seek it out while others are content to simply live in a clock like world or a ceramic world both of which don’t make us in any way accountable.

If we were to look at the world with more of a systems mindframe, what would be the end result. Well, I think we would be a lot more careful especially with what we do with what we have. A lot less wasteful, a lot more thoughtful. But I suppose that I cannot wait for others to adopt this ideal in order to put it into practice. Its like Krishnamurti said, I am responsible for all of the violence and ugliness of the world because of my conditioning. Now this conditioning is being replaced by something new and more useful, and I am afraid to use it only because I am afraid of what it will cost me, what others will think. I am afraid of giving up my own comforts, my own perspective to come to a new one, one that makes more sense.