Interstellar and The American Pioneer Spirit

Let’s cut to the chase, Dr. Mann blew himself up. The Endurance is spinning out of control back to Mann’s planet. Inside the lander, there is nothing but silence. Shock. You realize amid this disaster that the hope of all mankind is in that ship. If it crashes, the story of mankind is over. You fire up the engines to the lander. The AI robot tells you to stop. You’re wasting fuel. But you will not go quietly into the night. You tell the AI to analyze the Endurance’s spin. Anne Hathaway asks you what you are doing. Docking.

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a powerful film. The intensity, the emotion, the score, all of it leaves a mark on the viewer. Sure, you can piece together its flaws and inaccuracies like any other movie, but unlike most movies, Interstellar has HEART, SOUL. I thought it was a good movie when I first watched it around 2016 or so, but when I watched it recently it took on a much deeper meaning. No doubt a big reason for it is I am now a father and connect with the character, Cooper, on a level I didn’t before, but it’s more than that. Cooper is more than a father, he represents in the movie the last remnant of the American Frontier type.

Cooper lives in a world that’s dying. Countries are no longer fielding militaries because they can’t. There is a lack of food. Everything is dying. All of mankind is now focused on farming, trying desperately to hold onto life. A blight is killing all the crops. Corn is the last crop still holding on. In this effort, in this fight for survival, much is lost.

Cooper — a former NASA pilot — comes to find out during a parent-teacher conference that the official textbooks say the moon landing was FAKE and his kids’ teachers both believe in this. He is aghast, appalled at what America has become. Now, I should preface that Nolan made this struggle about mankind, not about America specifically, but Cooper undeniably embodies the American Pioneer Spirit. After the botched parent-teacher conference, he tells his father-in-law, “We are explorers, pioneers, not caretakers.” He even looks like an astronaut with a haircut you’d expect from a 1960s cornfed American boy. Most have probably seen Interstellar by now, so I will not give play-by-play, but a gravitational anomaly leads him to a secret NASA base where he meets his own Professor Brand who has been put in charge of saving the human race. Brand reveals that corn will eventually fail and when it does, mankind will begin suffocating. The earth is rejecting them.

We get more of Nolan’s hard belief in the American Frontier type when just before this revelation, Cooper tells Brand, “We will find a way. We always have.” Cooper while not religious in the film, has all the trademarks of your typical American Protestant Pioneer. A way will present itself. An unshakable faith. Powerful confidence against the dying of the light. You are transported back in time when you watch Interstellar. Transported to a time when the fate of America remained in the hands of its Founding Stock.

I’ve heard there is a Christian underlay to Interstellar. It is plain to see, but it doesn’t shove it down your throat and in the context of the movie, it fits. But I feel the need to touch on it a bit as I like to talk about WARRIOR RELIGIONS and something you run into when you spend too much time online is the split between Christians and Pagans. It would be fair to say that many today feel betrayed by Christianity. We are drawn to Paganism because of this. I’m personally turned off by Christianity; however, in its American Protestant form, I also find great comfort. How do you like this Holy Contradiction? Can you apply Christianity to Space Futurism?

Interstellar demands unshakable faith.

In the wake of 2020, you can say Nolan helped to predict the fall of the expert. You were told to ignore what was in front of you for the “science.” Told you should “trust the experts.” Well in Interstellar, the experts are wrong constantly. The best of them, Dr. Mann, lost his nerve and sent a false signal in hopes that someone would come to rescue him. Many mistakes are made in this movie thanks to the experts. Cooper himself makes mistakes, but by the end, he’s given into faith and he leads mankind to the promised land.

Interstellar demands unshakable faith. Relying on the experts or the “science,” leads directly to disaster, again and again. However, excellence in all its forms gives way to fortune. Being an expert is not the same as possessing excellence and this comes out as you watch the film. Be it a movie, the lessons Nolan gives you reach out into reality. Real science is worth its weight in gold, expertism will destroy mankind. You cannot get stuck in the weeds, breathing in the dirt. Man was never meant to remain on the earth.

Nowhere is this best shown than in the docking scene described above. The AI robots think docking with the Endurance is impossible. “No, it’s necessary,” Cooper tells them on the approach. As the ship is spinning, some sixty-eight revolutions per minute. There is powerful scene showing the necessity of this and unshakable faith matched with excellence. As Anne Hathaway passes out, Cooper leans his head into the spin, something you learn from being a great pilot, to prevent himself from passing out while TARS docks the lander on the Endurance, and disaster is averted.

The American Frontier type is capable of great things. It was only this type that got mankind to look up at the stars. To wonder what our place was in the stars. THAT came from Americans. Americans who had already settled a New World. Americans who showed it could be done. THAT is all fading in our day. But it is not gone and we cannot let it disappear. The preservation of this Pioneer Spirit is the most important issue of our time.

The society we were born into strives to prevent the re-emergence of the Pioneer Spirit. It fights to keep the American down. To make him disappear. The odds are stacked against us, but in this, you must also believe. To show that unshakable faith. That even though the chips are down now, they won’t stay down. They can’t stop the rise of the American. They cannot stop the Pioneer Spirit.

That is all for now. There is more to talk about, such as the viability of Christianity, both for a futurist people which we must be, and for the Warrior Religion, but that is for another time. For now, you must remember this Pioneer Spirit and the old American type. Become it. Make sure your kids follow in those footsteps.

“Mankind was born on earth. It was never meant to die here.”