A World of Too Many Things

A world of too many things is where I live. It’s an American world in which multitudes huddle alone together surrounded by their iClutter and omnipresent screens that rain a constant barrage of inane or negative images onto our minds … and our children’s. As Admiral Robert Byrd stated in the Antarctic long ago, “Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

Most American kids endure incessant lessons and electronic visions about the imminent demise of our “civilization” — witness the constant forebodings of the culture’s ultimate failure, from riots in Ferguson, Missouri, to endless bombings of insurgents in Syria or Taliban in Afghanistan, to the increasingly aggressive homeless on the streets as our grotesque inequalities mount. The first black president may also become our first president impeached and convicted.

Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar discusses none of these troubling issues, yet in subtle ways the small Midwestern town opening the film symbolically reflects a growing hopelessness over the inevitable decay of world civilization. Bedrock American values, stick-to-it-iveness and courage in the face of environmental disaster … all rot as the sickening dust settles onto everything. Even our hardy American corn will finally succumb, and the stoic farmers and their children hack and cough, just as we metaphorically suffer fear of ISIL, hopeless inequality, and fruitless gridlock in Congress.