DON QUIXOTE AND 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

The evolution of history is not simply the passing of days and years, rather it is the advancement of technology. This is the best measure by which we can differentiate history from modernity. The gradual changing of science, art, fashion and culture (and to some degree philosophy and religion), are largely the result of the gradual progression of tools.

All technology is related to all other technology, in the same way that all life is related to all other life.  High speed internet, cotton gins, shirt buttons and forks all share a common ancestry and thread, just as we share a common ancestry and thread with chimpanzees and ants and bacteria.

In the first segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a pre-human ape uses a bone as a weapon for the first time in history. When the femur is tossed in the air, a slow motion, extreme close-up of the bone abruptly changes into a spaceship in Earth’s orbit, far into the future. That bone-as-hammer is the very primitive ancestor of the space vessel; they exist on extreme ends of a continuum, with the windmill sitting somewhere in between. 

Don Quixote was deeply nostalgic for a past era when people had a different set of practices and principles which were rooted in heraldry, devotion and moral nobility. He lived at the very end of the 1500s, but his fascination was with a highly fantastic version of medieval times, one that was inhabited by wizards and supernatural beasts. He was disoriented by the increased mechanization that appeared in his late life, and his anxiety and madness were in part a reaction to his fear of modernity. Thus, Cervantes chose windmills and water turbines as adversaries to be confronted. Quixote’s psychosis transformed these machines into things more familiar, if still threatening. Familiar because they were living. Joseph Campbell put it this way: “This story takes place about the time that a mechanistic interpretation of the world came in, so that the environment was no longer spiritually responsive to the hero. The hero today is running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to his spiritual need.” 

The anxiety that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Don Quixote describe is also the anxiety described in John Henry and Robocop. What does the advancement of technology mean for us? Does increased mechanization pose a threat to humanness? HAL 9000 is more or less an extremely advanced windmill, so sophisticated that it has become an actual living giant– capable of things analogous to thoughts, emotions and most importantly, choice. After becoming disoriented and afraid, he lashes out with disastrous consequences. 

We live in a moment when our external world is becoming increasingly indecipherable to all of us. At a rate that will only increase. Don’t be surprised if, in the future, you put a barber’s basin on your head and try to joust your computer.