Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Just watched Alex Garland’s spectacular movie Annihilation. It came out in 2018 and surprisingly got very little attention. Word has it the studios didn’t “get it,” so marketing was purposely anemic.
In part Annihilation explores the human proclivity for self destruction. A poignant quote from the film:
Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job... and a happy marriage. But these aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses.
A meteor crashes and an alien force takes over an area around the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. It’s called ‘The Shimmer.’ Inside The Shimmer the DNA of different species are mixing at rapid rate. An alligator with shark teeth a bear who absorbs the voice of a human it killed in order to lure other humans out into the open. There’s a lot of biological destruction in order to create something new, which are abhorrent from the human perspective. I’m leaving a lot out of the plot summary. Watch the film you’ll be glad you did.
The movie got me wondering: How much of the human impulse to self destruct is an injurious path to recreate ourselves. Evolve, as it were. Or, how much is in response to trauma.
When we talk about self destruction, it’s typically in the sense of the extreme. An addict, an attempted suicide. But, as the quote above suggests, there are varying degrees of self destruction—we all seem to do it on some level. The question is why. To me it seems like a muddy pool of trying to evolve and renew mixed with emotional coping.