One needs to make creepy friends in order to Survive.
Even a man with my vast talents
is worth less inside than a carton of cigarettes
and a sharp piece of metal in your pocket.
Do you know The Story of Prometheus?
No, of course you don't.
Prometheus was a God
who stole The Power of Fire from The Other Gods
and gave control of it to Mortals.
In essence, he gave us Technology.
He gave us Power.
Kitty Kowalski:
So we're stealing Fire?
In The Arctic.
Lex Luthor:
Actually, sort of.
You see, whoever controls Technology
controls The World.
The Roman Empire ruled The World
because they built roads.
The British Empire ruled The World
because they built ships.
America, The Atom Bomb,
and so on and so forth.
I just want what Prometheus wanted.
Kitty Kowalski:
Sounds great, Lex, but you're not a God.
Lex Luthor:
Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes,
and don't share Their Power with Mankind.
Minion :
Hey, boss.
We found something.
Lex Luthor:
No, I don't wanna be a god.
I just wanna bring fire to The People.
And I want my cut.
Kitty Kowalski:
Was this his house?
Lex Luthor:
You might think so. Most would.
This is more of a monument to a long dead and extremely powerful civilization.
This is where he learned who he was.
This is where he came for guidance.
Possibilities.
Endless Possibilities.
Kitty Kowalski:
You act like you've been here before.
Jor-El:
My Son. You do not remember me.
I am Jor-El. I am Your Father.
By now I will have been dead for many thousands of your years.
Lex Luthor:
He thinks I'm his son?
Jor-El:
Embedded in the crystals before you is the total accumulation of all literature and scientific fact of dozens of other worlds spanning the twenty-eight known galaxies.
Kitty Kowalski:
Can he see us?
Lex Luthor:
...No, he's dead.
Jor-El:
There are many questions to be asked.
Here, in this.... Fortress of Solitude, we will try to find the answers together.
So, my son...Kal-El...speak.
Lex Luthor:
Tell me everything.
Starting with crystals.
Thor :
What good were you in your cell?
Loki :
Who put me there?
WHO PUT ME THERE?
Thor :
YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHO!
YOU KNOW DAMN WELL!
[pins Loki]
Thor :
[lets go of Loki]
She wouldn't want us to fight.
Loki :
Well, she wouldn't exactly be •shocked•.
Thor :
[smiles]
I •wish• I could trust you.
Loki :
[whispers]
Trust my rage.
Lex Luthor:
Kryptonite.
You're asking yourself, "How?"
Didn't your dad ever teach you to look before you leap?
Crystals. They're amazing, aren't they?
They inherit the traits of the minerals around them... kind of like a son inheriting the traits of his father!
You took away five years of my life,
I'm just returning the favor!
Superman :
I'm still Superman!
Lex Luthor:
Get up! Come on!
Now, fly.
So long, Superman.
There’s a Fatherly Aspect, So here’s what God as a Father is like : You can enter into a Covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. It responds to Sacrifice.
It Answers Prayers
It Punishes and Rewards.
It Judges and Forgives.
It’s notNature.
It built Eden for Mankind and then banished us for disobedience.
It’s Too Powerful to be Touched.
It granted Free will.
Distance from it is Hell.
Distance from it is Death.
It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and it’s The Law.
Statistically Speaking of Course, it’s Still The Safest Way to Travel.
Gentlemen, This Man Needs Help.
The first step toward curing any psychological problem is to acknowledge it. When you can put a name and form to it, when you can say what you are lonely for, you’re halfway free. Being conscious is your greatest ally. If you are able to admit to yourself how much you wish to fail, this is the beginning of a cure.
Loneliness for What Is Not Yet
As we will see in the next chapter, Dante describes the lowest level of Hell as the most difficult place of all. It is one hundred percent FROZEN, entirely cold. Loneliness is always cold. It’s inhuman. The worst Hell is the frozen place of unrelatedness, disconnectedness. Hell ice is worse than hellfire.
The second kind of loneliness is the longing for what is possible but has not yet been realized. An alive, vigorous, functioning human being has a vivid intuition of what he is capable of. His intuition leaps forward, and he imagines what is possible. He fantasizes a perfect woman or a love affair that will touch him to the core. He feels lonely for what is not. He thinks that he sees out there what will assuage his loneliness. But that can only happen in here. When our value and sense of meaning are always outside ourselves—there is someone, something, some place, or some condition that will cure our problem, “just as soon as...”— we are stuck in an insoluble problem.
My next book should be entitled Just As Soon As...because “ just as soon as” psychology dominates almost everyone.
• Just as soon as I get married
• Just as soon as I get divorced
• Just as soon as I have more money,
• Just as soon as the cancer treatment is over.
“Just as soon as” is an intermediate stage where you sense what matters to you, but you externalize it and don’t yet claim it as your own. Your felt need might be a new task, a new psychic capacity, or a new insight, but it is too soon to realize that it is your own gold.
To sense this value, even if you cannot yet own it, is a start.
The first kind of loneliness—for what once was— drives us backward and downward. The second kind— for what is not yet—drives us forward and upward. At least this is a progressive loneliness. It drives us to accomplishments.
But both of these kinds of loneliness DRIVE us.
Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.
Suddenly: The light changes in the Fortress. The giant head of Jor-El materializes on the opposite wall.
JOR-EL
The virtuous spirit has no need for thanks or approval...
LUTHOR
What the...
EVE takes a step back, frightened. LUTHOR looks up at the image with increasing pleasure.
JOR-EL
... only the certain conviction that what has been done is right...
LUTHOR
It's his old man! The kid looks like him! Are you his old man?
EVE
Ask him where the bathroom is.
JOR-EL
... Develop such conviction in yourself...
LUTHOR
Are you here?
JOR-EL
... the human heart on your planet is still subject to small jealousies...
LUTHOR
(catching on)
Aahh, he's not here! He speaks from the past! Cute, very cute...
JOR-EL
... lies, and monstrous deceptions.
LUTHOR yanks the crystal out.
LUTHOR
So much for moral rearmament.
“But there was one fix we couldn’t seem to wrap our collective imagination around: The Marriage.
The Clark-Lois-Superman triangle—
• Clark loves Lois.
• Lois loves Superman.
• Superman loves Clark.
as Elliot S! Maggin put it in his intelligent, charming Superman novel Miracle Monday — seemed intrinsic to the appeal of the stories.”
“Sometimes, when you put your gold onto another person, he also puts his gold onto you.
It gets complicated when the exchange of gold goes both ways.
One of the contaminations of levels that we make— we’re scarcely able to think otherwise—is that the exchange of gold means marriage.
Marriage is good, and gold is good.
They may go together nicely.
But they’re not synonymous. It can be a problem when we mix these things up.
We think, “I’ve fallen in love, I must take her to bed.”
Maybe you will, but that’s not synonymous with falling in love.
In our culture, mutual projection is regarded as the prerequisite for marriage.
We take for granted that we will marry the person we are in love with.
But being in love is not enough to guarantee a successful marriage.
When you fall in love, you feel overwhelmed with excitement.
You’ve projected your gold, your deepest inner value, onto the other person.
You’ve given it to her to incubate for a while, until you are ready to take it back. And if the feeling is mutual, she has given her gold to you.
For the relationship to succeed, somewhere along the way each of you has to take your gold back.
Unfortunately, that’s usually accompanied by disillusionment.
“You’re not the knight I thought you were.”
“You’re not a princess when you wake up in the morning.”
The gold comes clattering down by way of disappointment.
If we could only understand that we put our gold in someone’s lap for a period of time—until we get stronger—and someday it will come to an end.
We aren’t wise in this respect, and it’s one of the most painful issues in our culture.
Five years later, when the relationship isn’t working, we don’t understand that it’s time for us to withdraw our projection and actually relate to the other person —our partner, our spouse.
True marriage can only be based on human love, which is different from romantic love, being in love, or in-loveness. Romanticism is unique to the West, and is a relatively new occurrence, only since the twelfth century. Romantic love is not a basis for marriage. Our human life, our marriage, is fed by the capacity to love human to human. When we’re in love, we put our gold—our expectations—on the other person, and this obliterates her. There is no relatedness.
Loving is a human faculty. We love someone for who that person is. We appreciate and feel a kinship and a closeness. Romantic love, on the other hand, is a kind of divine love. We deify the other person. We ask that person, without knowing it, to be the incarnation of God for us. Being in love is a deep religious experience, for many people the only religious experience they’ll ever have, the last chance God has to catch them.
One reason we hesitate to carry our own gold is that it is dangerously close to God.
Our gold has Godlike characteristics, and it is difficult to bear the weight of it.
Well. No matter, Otis. You'll hear of them again. Those Alpha Waves Will Lead Me North - to his Secret. And when I have that secret - I'll have Superman.
ARCHER:
The Admiral thinks that they're humanoids enhanced with technology.
He believes they abducted the research team.
REED:
We're a long way from the Arctic. What can we do?
ARCHER:
Earth tracking stations spotted the transport leaving orbit at warp three point nine.
TUCKER:
That's impossible.
Those transports can't exceed one point four.
And it comes to one great statement, which for me is a key statement of the understanding of myth and symbols. He says.
“I saw myself on The Central Mountain of The World, the highest place.
And I had a vision, because I was seeing in a sacred manner, of the world.”
And the sacred central mountain was Harney Peak in South Dakota.
And then he says,
“But the central mountain is everywhere.”
That is a real mythological realization.
BILL MOYERS:
Why?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
It distinguishes between the local cult image, Harney Peak, and its connotation, the center of the world.
The center of the world is the hub of the universe, axis mundi, do you know, the central point, the pole star around which all revolves.
The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together.
Movement is time, stillness is eternity, realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal not moment, but forever -is the sense of life.
Realising how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity, and the experience of the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience is the mythological experience, and he had it.
So is the central mountain of the world Jerusalem, Rome, Banaras.
Lhasa, Mexico City, you know?
Mexico City, Jerusalem, is symbolic of a spiritual principle as the center of the world.
BILL MOYERS:
So this little Indian was saying, there is a shining point where all lines intersect?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
That’s exactly what he said.
BILL MOYERS:
He was saying God has no circumference.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
God is an intelligible sphere, let’s say a sphere known to the mind, not to the senses, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
And the center, Bill, is right where you’re sitting, and the other one is right where I’m sitting.
And each of us is a manifestation of that mystery.
CLOSE ON LUTHOR AND OTIS
LUTHOR stands in front of a large tub of water, transfers wet clothes from a vat, rinses them, hands them to OTIS who rings them out, runs them through an old-fashioned roller-type dryer, stacks them neatly in a hamper. LUTHOR,
clearly depressed, sighs deeply.
LUTHOR
So this is how it ends for the greatest criminal mind of our time. Not with a whimper, mind you. Not with a bang.
(examines hands)
With washwoman's thumb...
LUTHOR sighs again, continues rinsing. OTIS squeezes a garment in the rollers. looks over sympathetically.
OTIS
I know, Mr. Luthor. I know...
LUTHOR
What could you know? You've only got a twenty-year sentence. A sissy sentence.
But how do they choose to reward Lex Luthor, the world's one true genius? Do they give me treasure? Do they give me glory? What, in fact, do they give me?
OTIS
Life plus twenty-five years.
(cheerfully)
It almost worked out, Mr. Luthor. The West
Coast was almost destroyed. Millions of people were alomost killed.
LUTHOR
Almost. Almost, Otis. But as it turned out, thanks to Superman, not one drop of blood was shed.
LUTHOR grits his teeth, hands OTIS some wet clothes.
LUTHOR
All I want now is to get out of here and destroy that miserable, glad-handing showboat.
OTIS
How? You've tried everything. Nothing seems to stop him.
LUTHOR
Every man has a vulnerable point. Some like you, Otis, have several. I just didn't find his in time. But now - finally - thanks to my invention, patience, and skill - my black box is nearly ready.
OTIS
That black box in your cell?
LUTHOR
(frantic)
Ssssshh.....!
OTIS
(whisper)
That black box in your cell? What's it
for?
LUTHOR looks at OTIS secretively, hands him a wet garment.
OTIS
It's only one sock.....
LUTHOR
Pegleg Horvath only needs one sock.....
(back to rinsing)
All attempts to track Superman with conventional means have failed, including radar, correct? Correct. He flies at super-speed. And yet we know that every so often, when he isn't all tied up with "doing good" and taking bows and kissing babies... he goes North. North. Where? We don't know. The tracking device always loses him.... now why would he go North?
OTIS
To ski?
LUTHOR
It's incredible, Otis. Your brain defies all known scientific laws....
OTIS
Thanks, Mr. Luthor....
LUTHOR
In its infinite capacity to deteriorate.....
(rinsing)
That black box, Otis - that innocent looking piece of devilish genius - goes beyond all means of conventional radar.
(leans in)
It tracks Alpha Waves.
OTIS
(impressed)
Alpha Waves!
LUTHOR
I could have said linguini, couldn't I.
Well. No matter, Otis. You'll hear of them again. Those Alpha Waves Will Lead Me North - to his Secret. And when I have that secret - I'll have Superman.
LUTHOR picks up a wet garment, looks at it with extreme
distaste.
LUTHOR
Slasher Fogelstein is a bedwetter.
Pass it
on.
OTIS nods, turns to no one.
SEVEN:
What are the other options?
EMH:
They could be returned to the Borg.
If they were reassimilated into the Collective, they would regain consciousness, and then live out a normal life span.
SEVEN:
As drones.
EMH:
As drones.
But they'd be alive, Seven.
JANEWAY:
Let me ask you something.
Do you think of these people as family?
SEVEN:
Is it relevant?
JANEWAY:
There's an old saying.
Blood is thicker than water.
It means that the ties of family run deeper than any other kind of relationship.
We'll often do things for members of our family we'd never dream of doing for anyone else.
[Corridor]
NAOMI:
Seven. Seven.
SEVEN:
Naomi Wildman.
NAOMI:
I heard about the drones.
Did they hurt you?
SEVEN:
I am not damaged.
NAOMI:
What do they want?
SEVEN:
They are seeking information from me, but I am uncertain whether I can help them.
NAOMI:
Oh. Be careful.
SEVEN:
Naomi Wildman, do you consider me to be family?
NAOMI:
I, I don't, I mean.
Yes. Is that okay?
SEVEN:
I have no objection.
NAOMI:
Do you think of •me• as family?
SEVEN:
Yes.
CHAKOTAY:
A month as an individual, or a lifetime as a drone.
Which option would you choose?
[Doctor's office]
SEVEN:
Survival is insufficient.
EMH:
I beg your pardon?
SEVEN:
Eight years ago, I forced them to return to the Collective.
I won't make the same mistake again.
They deserve to exist as individuals.
We must terminate the link between them.
EMH:
I understand that you feel a certain responsibility for these patients, but as their physician, so do I.
It's my duty to preserve their lives for as long as possible, even if that means -
SEVEN:
I will not return them to the Borg.
EMH:
Are you thinking of what's best for them, or for you?
SEVEN:
Clarify.
EMH:
You said it yourself.
You made a mistake.
And Seven of Nine doesn't like to make mistakes.
She strives for perfection.
I want you to think about the motivation behind your decision.
Are you doing what's right for those three people, or are you trying to alleviate the guilt you feel over what happened eight years ago?
SEVEN:
The damage I did can never be repaired, and my guilt is irrelevant.
I simply want them to experience individuality, as I have. As you have.
At one time, you were confined to this Sickbay.
Your programme was limited to emergency medical protocols.
In some ways, you were not unlike a drone.
But you were granted the opportunity to explore your individuality.
You were allowed to expand your programme.
Your mobile emitter gives you freedom of movement.
Your thoughts are your own.
If you were told you had to become a drone again, I believe you would resist.
EMH:
Yes. I suppose I would.
SEVEN:
They would resist as well.
They would choose freedom, no matter how fleeting.
