I make mistakes sometimes. Always keep that in mind. I am not a professional.
What I wanted to add were some further thoughts on that movie, which seemingly got to me on a mythic level. Let me ask this question: what is superficiality? What is a superficial bar? What is a superficial person? What is a superficial life?
Logically, to answer this question, do you not need some sense of what is true, what is behind (for walls) or below (for water) the surface? You have emotions that are “on the surface”, and this implies the possibility of emotions that are below the surface, and somehow more true.
Take greed: is it inherently a superficial emotion? If you have enough, and want more, more, more, do we call this superficial? Well, what is below the surface? Is it not a sense of emotional disconnection from people–or at least some people; you can be greedy for your family, but feel no compunction in taking from others–and a deep underlying fear of some sort?
Indeed: could we not speak of “greeds” in the plural? Can we not even consider both all vices and virtues as utterly unique both to individuals and moments? Can I not express greed differently in different contexts?
The Buddhists split everything up: there is no unitary self, no unitary space, and no unitary time. Everything consists of little bits with infinitesimal spaces between them. Space, perhaps, is the primary reality on their account, Mahakasha if memory serves. Certainly this has been mentioned in my Kum Nye series. I don’t even know if they consider the bits–dharmas–to be actually in motion, or only apparently in motion. This, itself, may vary from school to school.
So, back to the “Blanks” (British humor is certainly quite dry), the automatons with seeming personalities of “The World’s End”. Are they happy? Do we not need a sense of what happy is to answer this question?
Is it really good sex? This is an answer we are given implicitly constantly. We chase chicks, or are chased by dicks, and somehow bliss is supposed to follow.
But it doesn’t. You get to a certain age, and if you are growing emotionally, you realize that most of life is not about evanescent pleasures, which we can call superficial because we realize deeper pleasures are possible.
But is pleasure the purpose of life? In my view, yes, it is. But pleasure of a qualitatively rich variety, which ultimately transcends the very need for pleasure.
As I think out loud, though, it increasingly seems obvious to me that if you lack a sense of life being about other than procreating and dying–which is more or less the Freudian/Materialistic account–then becoming deeper as a person is difficult.
Richard Dawkins seemingly thrives on aesthetics, particularly intellectual aesthetics. But how in his world does a deep sense of connection to other humans beings, of love, arise? Love is just an illusion, a manifestation of some genetically determined social impulse, with likely a good amount of the procreative instinct dominating it.
As I begin to climb a ladder out of my hole, my cell, I realize that any life lived without the cultivation of love as its primary purpose is largely wasted. This is where we go when we want to get below the surface, or behind our own walls, and those we erect to defend from others.
To be deeper is to expand. Perhaps, then, a better word than superficiality is “emotionally small”, or constricted, or dense–or, to put it properly, afraid.