myth and man

This gets easier as I go. It's better to keep track of my ideas with sleep as an opportunity cost, I've decided. I already wrote a good amount today, but why quit now?

The first time I watched Citizen Kane I was quite underwhelmed by it. Sure, I recognized the technical mastery- some of the camera work and editing is staggering, even by today's standards. On the whole though, the reason that the rise and fall of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane should be so resonant was completely lost on me.

Rewatching it now for class I feel like the veil has been pulled back. I can see now what Orson Welles was trying to show his audience, and I know that Citizen Kane is bound to become one of my favorite films of all time as I get older.

Kane has everything material a man could hope for on this earth- he spends and tightens his grip around his world, controlling his reality and lining up his opportunities. As he gets older, he realizes that his world is slipping away from him regardless of the things he was given- the irony is that Welles lets us see this earlier than Kane realizes it. When he leaves Mrs. Kane's boarding house, Charles Kane has already reached the spiritual peak of his life, and the rest is the hurtling downward motion of the rollercoaster.

Kane is put on a pedestal because of his wealth, but the movie shows that wealth affects personality and not much more. At the end of the day, Kane loses as much as anyone else- maybe even more.

Welles was asking all the right questions here- how can we measure a man? What makes a life valuable? As Kane says himself in the movie as to whether he can see the greatness within himself, "I think I made the best of my circumstances."

Maybe that's what it is to be human. All we really know is uncertainty. When we look through the dusty photographs in our mind and examine all the dirty faces of fellow classmates, were we filled with curiosity and wonder about the future? The little boy who pushed the cutest girl in class over for attention could grow up to be a rapist or a politician, the girl could grow up to be a submissive housewife or a radical feminist.

Potential is always there for good or worse, and every second is pregnant with near-misses and half-grasped opportunities. What should we seize and what should we let drift away? Kane did all he could to change his life, but at some point his life began to steer itself independent of his control. So what role does fate play in our lives?

Every man's goal is to carve his icon into the blank slate of life. When a man dies, he hopes to careen out and leave a bleeding scar in the fabric of his reality, a wound that will stretch for generations and years. If we succeed in doing so, what then? When we make decisions, we step up to within an inch of Fate, interlock fingers and try not to get pushed over backwards. In the end, who wins?

We measure meaning by ourselves and by our consciousness by and large. If we are too afraid to sit alone with our decisions, then we live for or against the abstract idea of God that we don't understand- we retreat to our guilt and fear and await judgment or salvation. A God may very well exist, but few people have ever unfolded all the trappings that come with the notion of an omniscient God.

Without mincing too many more words, the ultimate question about life is whether or not the mythic quality in men's lives is man made or God made? Are we guiding our myths or is someone else pulling the strings? I don't know the answer, but I think there's compelling evidence for both sides.