87. Kamala, temples and labs

I’m waiting – eager, excited, stretched forward to a maximum – for the two final episodes of Battlestar Galactica, to be aired today. Science-fiction. Yep. I’ve no problem saying it: I often prefer sitting in front of the screen with BSG than watching the reality within my skull unfold, which means that I, for one, can tell the difference.

BSG has tackled some of the issues occupying western civilization today. As far as we can tell. How science and religion cope with each other. Anxieties about technologies. About our creations. The city.

Then, the plurality and/or singularity underlying beliefs. Eternal questions about mortality and the recycling destiny of matter. What are goals, where is it we think we’re going. Are we heading forward or simply fleeing. How do we define humanity, divinities. And that History that keeps repeating itself, as if we weren’t learning much despite our self-proclaimed prowess.

Also, leadership models. Why do people listen and follow, band together or break away. What’s in the justification of war. That enemy is so much like us. Could I be a cylon. Who is, I can’t tell. Can I give birth. Should I. Can reproduction be a philosophical issue, be an ethical one. The machine and the flesh, how do they combine. Can they. Should they. Sex and violence. The inevitability. Investigating destiny, since nature is what it is. A circle and the Return of the Same. A sameness that is changed once it comes back to its origin. For having traveled through all of its potential fates. And what are these mistakes that keep trapping us, making no difference in the outcome. Or do they.

BSG is a show about tons of questions.

The ones modern intelligentsia has stopped asking in a penetrable, lucid way. Articulated by TV script writers, actors and special effects technicians. Brilliant, because they don’t try to provide answers, but widen the mystery, elevating our understanding difficulties to new problematic dimensions. A new prose. A selection of images and sounds adding depth to our main enigmas. As we are lost in that huge space, civilian ships clinging to Galactica, a fragile balance of powers, always moving, delicate, and in danger. Victory and defeat annulling each other, although good at characterizing the struggles by which we define our worth.

They are no aliens. There’s us and what we did. And it is what we did that stands in the path. Interesting. That the gods of Kobol did give up on us. And that we lied to ourselves. And will lie to ourselves again. It has already happened, and it will happen again.

Political, because democracy is no perfect solution. But it is part of the leading question. The one about turmoil. But so is the military. So are all our inventions. Imperfections being so perfect in organizing ourselves as a society defined by tensions. As we jump, disappear and appear. Should I network or not network. Paranoid as the enemy is in our ranks, am I its double or is it mine. Am I modeled after him, or is he modeled after me. We give birth to each other, murder each other. And start the same thing over and over. Dictators. A minute as the puppet of an armed authoritarian regime, later as preacher of a religious sect. Qualification: science. Was that a question. A go(o)d question. A one about seduction. Not so much principles.

Yes, I have enjoyed every scenes of Battlestar Galactica. The thrill. The beauty of possibilities. The plots. The ramifications. The characters. The Vipers. The signs pointing to humanity. Every second of confusion as we vented air and water. As machines could feel love. And us hatred. But then, we also loved and they hated. As we often lost more than we gained in terms of knowing. Questions getting bigger with each episode like they do in my life. Interested by the role of failure and shortcomings. By the magnificence of it all. When tolerance makes it way. And it is because we start again and again. Equal perseverance of the good and the evil, a quest for Earth. Destruction and creation. An inquiry into causes, effects and evolution (if there is one). The colonies, the colonizers, the colonized. The horoscopes. Matters of attitude, organic matter. Investigating throughout the script what matters most to us. And why some other things don't.

Investigation into the fiction of science, and the science of fiction. Art and violence. Culture and reproduction. Technologies as a part of nature. What is a purpose, and what are the means and limitations leading gloriously to achievements, fiascos. Are they different. Boomer and Starbuck. The President and the Commander. The Chief and Gaius. Apollo and Saul Tigh. Number 6 and Zarek. How do they belong to our own story lines. Will Caprica heighten our uncertainties, query our concerns a bit further. Linking past and future. Still scratching my head about the Final Five. Pegasus, Colonial One, Cloud Nine. Are we all in need of kamala. Is it a drug, a mother (program) in Matrix. A word in one of the languages I don’t understand. Kamala, temples, labs, nuclear warheads and toasters. Emotions and rationality functioning side by side. Often interchangeable. Explosive. Unsecured. Confrontational allies in their perpetual mutual attraction. Poetry and algorithms debating differentiation.