future

Constructing Social Capital

The future is a place of construction. What happens will be built on top of what is being done today. It’s easy for me to look back to search for answers, but the future is a place of dreams and aspiration. It can be a place that welcomes me if I build toward it today.

Where do I want to go? I like to come up with new ideas and new ways of organizing information. Other people have their own destinations.

The concept of social capital is useful for making a successful quest. The resources in the form of people and organizations whom I can connect with; people I can get feedback from and who can help me move from the origins of an idea into its completion. Social capital can be just as necessary as physical capital.

These memoji can represent some of the ways to build social capital. Depending on loved ones and people who care about the same things. Using physical resources to combine efforts. Building social capital by having something appealing to share. Finding people who want to come along toward the same goal. Having an idea that inspires people.

By building on their inspirations, many people could build a new future. Trusting that it will be successful is daunting without also constructing some social capital.

I believe many people currently are impoverished in their social capital. They might not belong anywhere and just need someone to help them climb up the mountain of fulfillment. Perhaps they feel unable to make something beautiful or reach the summit.

Social capital is a resource that would help many overcome their struggles.

Film Review: 12 Monkeys (1995)

Twelve Monkeys is a story about the world after a viral plague kills 6 billion people in 1996. The time travel story jumps between the 1990s before the pandemic and decades into the future. The future is run by strange scientists who hope to track down the virus’ origin. They send James Cole (Bruce Willis) back in time with a mission to gather information.

Another protagonist in the movie is the psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe). She is interested in the history of people who present a Cassandra complex. The Cassandra myth describes someone who knows the future but cannot do anything to change it. She wrote a book documenting examples of such people appearing in the past.

She is unfazed when she meets Cole who has the same outlook. She believes that he is mentally ill and she first meets him in her psychiatric hospital in 1990. She tries to maintain a clinical and objective interest in Cole. Cole vanishes for several years after his first hospital stay. He meets her a few years later and he kidnaps her for several days. Much of the story takes place during that kidnapping as she learns more about Cole’s remarkable story.

The future scientists are interested in a mysterious Army of the Twelve Monkeys which their surveillance indicates is responsible for the virus’ release. The Army of the Twelve Monkeys was led by Jeffrey Goines, played by Brad Pitt. His wannabe insurgents appear to be central actors in the plague because Goines father is a biologist studying deadly viruses. However, the exact role of Goines’ team is unclear until the end of the film. Goines and Cole meet when he shows Cole around the psych ward in 1990.

Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt provide excellent performances in the film. Willis portrays Cole as disoriented by time travel who does not know whether he is delusional or a “volunteer” traveling back in time on behalf of the scientists. He clearly demonstrates the sense of confusion and helplessness that his character experienced. Pitt portrays Goines as privileged, crazy and unpredictable with many goofy antics. Often institutionalized, Goines acts paranoid, manic and defiant. While in the hospital in 1990, he has a wild pillow escapade to help Cole escape. Goines has boundless energy and Pitt plays him very convincingly. Gradually Goines’ friends in the Army of the Twelve Monkeys realize he is unhinged and that his plans are going to end badly.

Review: Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Movie glasses
Terminator: Dark Fate is action packed and intense. The protagonists are always in danger of being killed by a Terminator sent to kill a young woman. She is important in fighting the coming machine war. The Terminator leaves plenty of collateral damage as he strikes out. Fortunately, the target of the assassin has plenty of help to make it through.

Despite the action, there was very little in the movie that was enjoyable. Dealing with a dystopic future can’t be treated as fun. The film shows a future world that would be horrific, but do I really want to be taken there?

There’s enough horror in our potentially dystopic future. We have some people building up the world now, while many others are doing their worst to let it falter. Terminator: Dark Fate starts with a beach covered with human skulls that just inoculates against striving to solve the problems of today.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was the bright spot in the movie. He had an acerbic aura that briefly lightened up the atmosphere. Describing himself as being good at telling jokes was one funny break in the movie.

Terminator: Dark Fate ramps up with more and more destructive ways to be killed. After so long, it just gets tiring. One asks: “When is it going to be over?”