Incepted....

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

Somehow, I can never locate where this idea has embedded itself. During the show, I had so many questions ans so many thoughts that I wanted to give further thought once the show was done. As soon as I left the cinema, most of the ideas disappeared. If i could remember it, this blog post would have been a lot longer.

In any case, I will be writing about my thoughts about the movie Inception, so if you have not watched it for one reason or another but do intend to watch it some time in the future, do not read on.

I will first just point out 3 loopholes which i found in the show (this seems to interest people more than anything), then a little secular analysis of a quote from the show and then end with a Christian analysis about the show.



I myself am not too interested in identifying loopholes in the show cause I don't quite see the point. I will just quickly point out some stuff which didn't quite make sense to me. First of which is why didn't the whole bunch of them get called back from the hotel level of the dream when the can went rolling down the slope? There were a few times that the van was completely off the ground and hence the feeling of falling should have been achieved.

The second one is more intriguing. Why is it that Albert missed the first kick? He was in no deeper state of dreaming and hence when the van first reversed off the bridge, he should have awoken already. This would have meant that he would not have been able to drop the rest and they would have been stuck.

The last question I have is why did Fischer and Ariadne have to jump off the building in the Limbo state when the explosion at the snow level of the dream should have brought them out. Is it not true, according to the movie, that when you die in the limbo state that you wake up in reality? If that were the case, then Fischer would have woken up prior to the rest and realized that he was connected to a machine.

There are actually a few of my own questions to the movie that i can't quite answer, but i think i shall omit those so that I can get down to me analysis.. Exciting.. to me at least!

One of the quotes which stuck with me when I watched the movie the second time was how Cobb says that,

"I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time."

This line was taken from the scene where they are trying to figure out how they should plant the idea into Fischer's head. Eames suggests that they should make Fischer's already fractious relationship with his Father even worse and hence Fischer will break up his Father's empire in retaliation.

Upon hearing the quote above, I thought that it wasn't really true. People do tend to act on impulse and retaliate if they feel they have been wronged, but at times people don't always repay good with anything at all.

However, i realized that this actually goes a lot deeper. I think it can be considered a fact that people want to be accepted. This feeling is stronger in a few compared to others, but at the end of the day, we do want people to have a good opinion of us, especially when that person in question is someone who means a lot to you. In this case, Fischer longed for his father's love, just like many kids long to gain the approval of their parents.

Every experience Fischer had with his father suggested that his father had little or no affection for him. As soon as it was suggested that perhaps he just misunderstood his father though, his sub-conscience was quick to grab onto that idea. It was evidently something that Fischer had considered before but dismissed due to the lack of evidence. Through the dream a plausible scenario, which showed his father in a positive and loving light, was created.

Although the script does not tell us whether he actually broke up his father's empire. He now had reason to be his own man instead of just following in his father's footsteps. You may think that Fischer is soft and gullible for believing that his father actually loved him, but I think it takes courage to look past someones many faults and see the good in them.

i do believe that good exists in each and every person. the question is,"Are we willing to look past their faults, which could hurt us multiple times, and see the good in them?" If we dismiss anyone as a bad person, then eventually that person will believe that he/she is bad and they will not bother to change. It always is about building others up. Suggest to people that they are loved and accepted and see the positive emotion bear fruit.



Onto the Christian analysis now. I must admit though that this isn't fully thought through and there are going to be quite a few loopholes.

At the end of Inception, it is hard to tell for sure if Cobb is in a dream or in reality. As I gave the movie some thought, it occurred to me that even now we're in a dream-like state. I'm not saying we're in a dream, because there are certainly differences between being in a dream and our current situation. Hence, I say that we are in a dream-like state.

For Christians, we know that earth is not our home and eternal life begins postmortem in heaven. As such, our reality is technically in heaven. However, different from a dream, our actions here on earth have a very real effect on where we end up in the after-life. This is why we can not kill ourselves in the dream to escape and return back to reality. If we take our own lives in this world, the likelihood is that we enter a limbo (hell) which we will never be able to escape.

So what about this life makes me feel like it is just a dream. Well, this world makes little sense to me. The amount of violence, discrimination and natural disasters just confound me at times. Surely a good Creator did not have a life like this planned for us.

So this begs the question of why I think our Creator, if one even exists, is by nature good. First, why do I think a Creator exists? Well, as of now, there is no explanation which shows that the creation of the world and everything around us could have happened naturally. Scientists point to the Big Bang, but somethings must have triggered it. My brother would be in a better position to talk about this because he is into all this sciency, nerdy stuff. For me though, I think it is most sensible to believe that there is a power greater than anyone of us that created us. It makes more sense than believing that everything popped out of nothing.

How do i know that our Creator is good? Well, I can see why a good God would create us, but i don't see any reason as to why a bad God would create us. If a bad God created us, surely we would be bound into slavery, with no choice as to how we want to live. There is no reason for a bad God to conceal himself, manipulation could be done openly.

So why would a good God create us? I believe that we have been created to fellowship with God. Do note that God does not NEED us to fellowship with Him, He has angels and He Himself is triune. However, I do think that he WANTS to have fellowship with us. For true fellowship to exist though, the 2 parties have to decide to engage in a relationship with each other.

This is precisely why God gives us free choice. He designed the earth to be a perfect place where He could commune with us, but we chose sin and now a sinful nature exists innately in each and every one of us. To be human was never meant to be to err. It was only after we had fallen to temptation that this place became temporal and death came into existence.

God could not let us live forever in our sinful ways because no face-to-face fellowship could have taken place due to God's holiness. As such, God sent his Son, Jesus, to die for our sin so that once we believe in Jesus, we may again enter into fellowship with God. Once we die, we are able to enter into God's presence again.

So what will I do now? Well, let's just say that a certain man is coming. I know where I want Him to take me, and I know where He will take me. What I do not know is when will He take me there, but it doesn't matter. In the meantime, I will try to convince others to join me on the Jesus Express to Eternity.

Will you take a leap of faith with Christ?