“What if Earth is the Alabama of the universe?”
— Comedian KATHLEEN MADIGAN
I was watching the director’s cut of a movie I really love, a movie that makes a similar point as the line by one of my favorite comedians.
“The Abyss” is one of James Cameron’s most underrated movies, an undersea adventure in which man comes into contact with a higher intelligence.
The Abyss
The higher intelligence has been living in the deepest part of the world’s oceans, unknown to man, for many years. It’s never clear if they have been on earth all along or if they are extraterrestrials who came to earth at some earlier point.
The hint is that they came from somewhere else since they seem distressed by the fact that the different nations of earth can’t get along with each other. The movie was released in 1989, when the Cold War was ending and people were starting to talk about a “new world order.”
Thirty-five years later, we live in a time of backlash, a time when “new world order” has become almost a curse. A time when characters like Donald Trump praise the ultra-nationalist authoritarians of Europe.
The Abyss
In “Madam Secretary,” the wonderful 2014-19 Tea Leoni television series about government, the main character announces her candidacy for president by saying the worst problem facing the modern world is nationalism.
It’s a shame Leoni’s television world and our own real world don’t have the incentive that nations in “The Abyss” get from the undersea species.
Spoiler alert?
On a 35-year-old movie? A spoiler that I actually gave away in the first picture?
Oh well.
The undersea species in “The Abyss” points out that it can force the nations of the earth to get along by bring thousand-foot tsunamis up to the shores around the world. The obvious message is “get along or we won’t stop them next time.”
Since we know nothing about life or civilizations on other planets, there is a tendency to assume our level of development is at least average for the universe. Some planets may be ahead of us, others behind.
But what if it’s not true? What if we are the Alabama of the universe? What if our greatest minds are the Tommy Tubervilles, the Katie Britts or the Rapin’ Roy Moores of other planets?
That would explain a lot.