Dan Persons

I started writing this piece on Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) knowing it’d be a stretch. The SF Path to Higher Consciousness is supposed to be about how genre film helps us look at ourselves and how we relate to our world and the universe. Civil War isn’t really about introspection, even though it presents a daunting set of moral challenges. Maybe it’s more that I wanted to use it to look into where I came from, what I seek from myself and my craft.

I want to float an idea by you, please don’t overreact: We humans are kinda stupid. Oh sure, we’ve come up with some spectacular things in our time, like democracy and vaccines and Fruit by the Foot (until that came along, I never paused to think, Wait, is my mid-day snack long enough?). Thing is, we’ve done so much spectacular stuff that we’ve gotten used to the notion that our brilliance was unassailable, that nothing could outsmart us. That concept might no longer be valid.