This is gonna be long, but I assure you there's a point.
A while back I saw Jurassic world, and I called Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard's character) a "physically useless social genius."
The more I think about it, the more I see that movie showing the three aspects of human interaction (Physical, mental, and social) and the three levels of expertise (useless, competent, and genius). I know these are broad and raw categories, but roll with me a minute here.
Claire starts the movie as a physically useless, mentally competent social genius. She's a virtuoso when it comes to schmoozing. Great at marketing, PR, and management, as all these skills involve getting people to do what she wants. She's not stupid at all. But give her a flat tire outside of cell service range or punch her in the face and she's useless.
A great deal of her character arc involves becoming physically competent. First in recognizing the problem (PUMCSR's have a problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect) then in realizing exactly what overcoming that entails. (at the waterfall scene, she rolls up her sleeves and ties off her shirt, while Owen asks what the hell she's doing. At this point, she's recognized the problem, but is focusing on the appearance rather than the substance). End result being, the woman staring at the door of paddock 9 with a burning flare in hand is far beyond the one we met answering her phone (stubborn lack of sensible shoes regardless).
Contrast her with some of the other characters.
First up is Masrani. Similar to Claire in that he's a physically useless, mentally competent social genius. He's smart enough to realize there's problems with i.rex and orders Owen brought in. Unfortunately, he doesn't follow the same journey as Claire and deludes himself into thinking he's more skilled than he is. Unfortunately, both dinosaurs and helicopters are creatures that can't be bribed, bullied, or bullshitted. Masrani dies because he's unwilling to accept that he's physically in over his head.
On the other hand, Hoskins is an inversion, being a socially useless, mentally competent physical genius. He's a 180 from Claire in that he has no preferable options other than force. He's very competent at using said force, taking over the control room and pointing out that firepower is the only thing that can stop I.rex at that point. What he fails to realize is that force isn't enough. Everyone has to sleep, and everyone needs to trust someone. That lack of understanding keeps Hoskins from realizing that raptors aren't guns or even attack dogs, and he gets eaten for his foolishness.
Then there's Lowry, the guy in the control room. Lowry is a socially useless physically competent mental genius. While he's brilliant enough to notice several things that go by his superiors (a drugged dino that escaped an enclosure is both terrified and stoned, evacuating the northern side of the park concentrated all the "prey" humans in the resort), he has nothing but snark and bad jokes for any of his superiors. And in what's Hollywood's biggest middle finger to the "nice guy" attitude, he tries to play his willingness to stay behind in an evacuation to flirt with a co-worker, only to be shot down hard. To his credit, he still stays behind, playing a part in taking down i.rex by the end.
Owen, by contrast, is competent all around but a genius in no particular area. And while competent, he's not infallible. He's unable to convince Claire or Masrani to take actions against i.rex that would have saved several lives, he's outsmarted into using the raptors as weapons by Hoskins, and he's a lousy flirt. But out of the bunch, he's the one who survives and thrives in both the normal world and in a crisis.
My point is, human beings need competence in all three spheres to be functional adults. No matter how much of a genius you are in one area, uselessness in another is something you will suffer for.
Why am I mentioning this?
Because on a macro scale, western society has been steadily losing competence in all three, to various levels.
Physically we're losing the ability to make it through a conflict, because we're being told from birth that fighting solves nothing. This is a cruel, cruel lie, which reaps a lot of pain when a fight comes to someone told it.
Socially we're dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller cliques, crippling our own emotional immune systems for the reward of being able to claim offense. Self-victimization is becoming nastier than meth.
Mentally we've standardized ourselves into cut-and-pasting from wikipedia, because snopes takes forever and even google wastes precious minutes we could spend forwarding some bullshit we never checked.
No wonder we're fucked. We're just finding out what we become useless at first.
A while back I saw Jurassic world, and I called Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard's character) a "physically useless social genius."
The more I think about it, the more I see that movie showing the three aspects of human interaction (Physical, mental, and social) and the three levels of expertise (useless, competent, and genius). I know these are broad and raw categories, but roll with me a minute here.
Claire starts the movie as a physically useless, mentally competent social genius. She's a virtuoso when it comes to schmoozing. Great at marketing, PR, and management, as all these skills involve getting people to do what she wants. She's not stupid at all. But give her a flat tire outside of cell service range or punch her in the face and she's useless.
A great deal of her character arc involves becoming physically competent. First in recognizing the problem (PUMCSR's have a problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect) then in realizing exactly what overcoming that entails. (at the waterfall scene, she rolls up her sleeves and ties off her shirt, while Owen asks what the hell she's doing. At this point, she's recognized the problem, but is focusing on the appearance rather than the substance). End result being, the woman staring at the door of paddock 9 with a burning flare in hand is far beyond the one we met answering her phone (stubborn lack of sensible shoes regardless).
Contrast her with some of the other characters.
First up is Masrani. Similar to Claire in that he's a physically useless, mentally competent social genius. He's smart enough to realize there's problems with i.rex and orders Owen brought in. Unfortunately, he doesn't follow the same journey as Claire and deludes himself into thinking he's more skilled than he is. Unfortunately, both dinosaurs and helicopters are creatures that can't be bribed, bullied, or bullshitted. Masrani dies because he's unwilling to accept that he's physically in over his head.
On the other hand, Hoskins is an inversion, being a socially useless, mentally competent physical genius. He's a 180 from Claire in that he has no preferable options other than force. He's very competent at using said force, taking over the control room and pointing out that firepower is the only thing that can stop I.rex at that point. What he fails to realize is that force isn't enough. Everyone has to sleep, and everyone needs to trust someone. That lack of understanding keeps Hoskins from realizing that raptors aren't guns or even attack dogs, and he gets eaten for his foolishness.
Then there's Lowry, the guy in the control room. Lowry is a socially useless physically competent mental genius. While he's brilliant enough to notice several things that go by his superiors (a drugged dino that escaped an enclosure is both terrified and stoned, evacuating the northern side of the park concentrated all the "prey" humans in the resort), he has nothing but snark and bad jokes for any of his superiors. And in what's Hollywood's biggest middle finger to the "nice guy" attitude, he tries to play his willingness to stay behind in an evacuation to flirt with a co-worker, only to be shot down hard. To his credit, he still stays behind, playing a part in taking down i.rex by the end.
Owen, by contrast, is competent all around but a genius in no particular area. And while competent, he's not infallible. He's unable to convince Claire or Masrani to take actions against i.rex that would have saved several lives, he's outsmarted into using the raptors as weapons by Hoskins, and he's a lousy flirt. But out of the bunch, he's the one who survives and thrives in both the normal world and in a crisis.
My point is, human beings need competence in all three spheres to be functional adults. No matter how much of a genius you are in one area, uselessness in another is something you will suffer for.
Why am I mentioning this?
Because on a macro scale, western society has been steadily losing competence in all three, to various levels.
Physically we're losing the ability to make it through a conflict, because we're being told from birth that fighting solves nothing. This is a cruel, cruel lie, which reaps a lot of pain when a fight comes to someone told it.
Socially we're dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller cliques, crippling our own emotional immune systems for the reward of being able to claim offense. Self-victimization is becoming nastier than meth.
Mentally we've standardized ourselves into cut-and-pasting from wikipedia, because snopes takes forever and even google wastes precious minutes we could spend forwarding some bullshit we never checked.
No wonder we're fucked. We're just finding out what we become useless at first.
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