I recently finished watching “Fringe” TV series. This TV series is about unexplained phenomena, not based on true events but it has got good effects, similar to TV series like X-files, Supernatural etc. Bunch of agents, scientists (called Fringe team) investigating these Fringe events and fixing them, in the background these 2 scientists (one is part of Fringe team-Walter Bishop) are responsible for all these anomalies created in the universe and cases are based upon their previous research being misused by others. The punchline of the series is quite strong, thus I decided to write a quick note about it, the gist would be as follows:
-There are some natural phenomenon that we should not tamper with. Being curious is one thing and manipulating natural phenomena after understanding the mechanisms behind them is another thing. Walter Bishop does some crazy stuff in the series, jumps to parallel universe (because he knew how to do it) to save his son’s doppelganger after his son dies, ends up creating an imbalance.
We already know how much do we tamper with nature/forests/oceans irresponsibly. I don’t want to bore people with the agenda points of awareness campaigns already held by environmentalists. I truly support them. We have got to grow up as a species and be more responsible.
-Negative emotions are natural in humans but we should not get so swayed away by them that the actions performed henceforth have long lasting disastrous effects. Since Walter Bishop’s Emotional Quotient (EQ) was not so high he could not handle the loss of his son, in his eagerness to save his loved one he ended up doing what I mentioned above, which triggered a chain reaction of universal degradation.
I remember a quote from my difficult teenage years “Your life is not determined by what happens to you, it is determined by how you respond to it”. How many terrorist groups/Jihadis/conflicts have emerged uptil now based on the negative emotional response to the situations they have faced? Numerous! Many might say Devina you have never faced such situations, you are sitting comfortably on your couch, it is easier to write than going through such situations, agree but we all have our battles (emotional/physical/political) to fight. Healthy emotional intelligence is imperative for a good, happy life.
-The main punchline of the series at the end was, sacrificing human emotions in pursuit of higher intelligence is not the right approach. In the series, earth is invaded and then ruined by “Observers” who are basically humans with much higher intelligence but no capability to feel emotions. They decided to let go off human emotions because emotions like greed, jealousy etc. are very distracting, what they didn’t realise was where there is good there is evil too. We are capable of positive emotions like love, compassion, dreaming at the same time negative emotions like hatred, jealousy, greed.
We humans want to be more intelligent, it is always a race be more intelligent, more rich, more accomplished, more advanced which is good I am in the race too but we should cherish and balance out our human side rather than cutting it down after tagging it as counter productive. I come across so many people who are very robot-like, mechanical I pity them and I dread the time when the world will have majority of such people. For now, I am quite thankful that there are people in this world who sit and enjoy with their friends, have families, enjoy the sunshine, dance in rain, dream, at the same time work ambitiously towards being more accomplished. Cheers on that!
-Devina