A Return to Attraction to Light and the End of the Public Intellectual

In “Attraction to Light: Light as Communication of Imagined Evolution” I attempted to explicate the repeated patterns of light itself as continued motif that is symbolic of evolution as well as non-specific callings for humanity’s outer edges. I had missed one very obvious inclusion, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Transfigurations” (1990). What could be a more obvious indicator of light as projection towards progress as “John Doe” who while he fights to regain his memory also regains his identity, and not just his own, but the end result of the evolution of his entire species. Working towards remembering, he also achieves the accomplishment of bringing forward motion progress to his species. That fact that his evolution is characterized as the influx of light in his body is a stark callback to the ruling regime of his people who seek to force-ably restrain progress by maintaining the dark. What is most hopeful in this story is the idea that evolution is not bound by the absence of social cohesion.

Additionally, I should have included Babylon 5’s Kosh in my original post. When we first see the Vorlon in the pilot movie, “The Gathering” (1993), we get a glimpse that underneath his encounter suit is a flooding body of light. The Vorlons are repeatedly referred to as one of the older species. This existence as light is reified later in “War Without End, Part II” (1996) when we see Valen on Babylon 4 with two bright shinning Vorlon on either side welcoming the beginning of the triumph over that era’s war with the Shadows.

What can we learn about this attraction to light in our current era? Do we have a Valen? A Kosh? No, under the regional determinationism of our current struggles we are slowly beginning to see that is no singular public individual who can or should stand apart to light the way. It will take collective effort, as I have mentioned here, and it will take the throwing off of this obsolete idea of the so-called “thought leader,” as I have mentioned here. The truth is, while there is a very good argument to be made we would benefit from one unique individual’s leadership over the common group, that only goes to prove that the common public intellectual is not so vital after all. They are not more endowed with any innate gift to prevent the world from sinking into a new dark age. While there are many standing in line to be seen as a public intellectual, as a leader of thought and form, we see now that they have had very little to offer and that their sheep will continue to spin out of control, never coming to a firm conclusion on what is moral, what is good, and what is the path forward. There are more and more drifting towards an idea of holistic and mutually beneficial progress and in that there is hope.