Another Meditation on "The Vault"

I've already written in a previous post about the long-standing symbolism of seeds as units of potential, and intellectualized about the human condition and whether we possess the ability to realize any kind of potential other than technological. Now that I'm finally putting pen to paper on this script, today's Friday meditation is more personal: How do we feel the expectations of our parents when we are children, and how do we place expectations on our children when we become parents?

As children, parental expectations produce all kinds of complex and contradictory effects. The biggest insult would be to feel that your parent(s) have no expectations of you whatsoever, which means that you're simply untalented and incapable. The biggest stress is to feel that your mother or father has gathered all of life's perceived failures into a giant heap and placed it on your shoulders--the "Tennis Dad" run amok. I recall recently reading an article ... probably in reaction to the "Tiger Mom" controversy ... about adults who as kids were pushed into prodigy. The lasting image was of a former virtuoso child pianist who now lives in a house in which a grand piano is suspended above him in the living room. Needless to say, he no longer plays, and probably has more than a sliver in his budget pie set aside for therapy.

As kids, you feel that expectation, for better or worse. You need to feel it. It needs to be there. And at some point, you decide whether you will embrace it or rebel against it. If you're lucky, your true ambitions match well with your parents' expectations, and you will be comfortable in your own skin. More likely, they won't be a perfect fit, and you will choose either to appease in exchange for approval, or reject (and face disappointment) in exchange for freedom. As a parent, I constantly think about those sacred cows I probably don't even realize I have, and the possibility that my only child might one day reject them (e.g., he'll not only reject the notion of studying abroad while attending a liberal arts college, he'll reject the entire notion of "college" as antiquated, and the concept of "liberal arts" as quaint, trite and no longer relevant).

And how will that make me feel? Disappointed in the rejection of what I value? Or pride in the fact that he is choosing to be his own man?

Taking Inventory

I've now finished the mandatory book-and-movie research phase of "The Vault." In theory. Sort of. Not really. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to list everything I've seen or read in the last few months to immerse myself in the strange realm of science fiction, dystopia, and um ... botany. Here goes, in no particular order, and probably missing a few:

Movies
Metropolis (original)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original)
Little Shop of Horrors (original)
Wings of Desire
Silent Running
Prometheus
I Am Legend
Contagion
2001: A Space Odyssey
Blade Runner (supposedly the definitive director's cut, no VO)
The Thing (John Carpenter version)
Forbidden Planet
E.T. (okay, that was really for James)
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Children of Men
The Matrix
Soylent Green
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
The Grey
Solaris
Moon

Books
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Philip K. Dick
"Collected Works of Philip K. Dick"
"Childhood's End" Arthur C. Clarke
"The Denial of Death" Ernest Becker
"Stranger in a Strange Land" Robert A. Heinlein
"At the Mountains of Madness" H.P. Lovecraft
"Botany for Dummies" (seriously)
"The Private Lives of Plants" Richard Attenborough

And the article that started it all
"Food Ark" National Geographic

It's been fun, but now it's time to mash it all up and bake a new cake.

Tinged with Expectation

“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth ... tinged with expectation." 

- Thoreau

The symbolism of seeds is almost too obvious to mention. To the "weed scientist" I spoke with at the University of Minnesota nearly a year ago, a seed is simply a collection of genetic material. The more you look at plant terminology, the more "womb-like" seeds seem (they have "embryos," after all). But of course, the "seed" of anything represents beginnings and potential. Each seed is a story waiting to be told. 

THE VAULT attempts to use seeds to get at themes of human potential, or the lack thereof. Which is interesting, because in a way seeds (and plant life in general) put us in our evolutionary place. Plants predate humans by millions of years. And in fact, when you look at life from the perspective of a plant (which David Attenborough did in his book and subsequent documentary series, "The Private Life of Plants"), you start to see humans (and all animals) as subservient to organisms so sophisticated that they make their own food. All animals, even the staunchest carnivores, ultimately depend on plants to live, as no animal, not even an arctic seal, lives on a diet that doesn't start with plant life. And as for fruit ... well, what are fruits excepts billboards to animals saying "eat this" so that a plant's seeds can be dispersed when they come out the other end? We are plants' bitch. Humbling. 

As for the Svalbard Vault, or any gene bank for that matter, how perfectly does that creation sum up everything great and tragic about the human species? We have the forethought and scientific capability to fashion a way of saving a precious resource from a variety of unpredictable forces, including the most frightening of all: ourselves. This shows our complex relationship with our own potential. The writer Chris Hedges argues that we evolve technologically but never morally. Now, as in every political season, we are pounded with messages conveying our potential as individuals and as a nation. Yet as we age, we face the reality of seeing how flawed we become, and so we turn our  hopes toward our children in an endless cycle of "we screwed things up, but you can fix them." 

We are all, as Thoreau said, "tinged with expectation." The question is, given our mortality ... and more important, our relentless consciousness of it ... what can we truly expect of ourselves, can we ever actually live up to the various potentials that we can imagine, and even if we can't, is there an overall "forward" momentum, or are we merely standing in place, like a plant?