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Future Earth
- Kishan Khoday
- Nov 2
- 8 min read
The power of mythology is, among other things, its ability to serve as a platform for the creative spirit. It provides people with a sense of their origins, for example through its narratives around the roots and foundations of the cosmos and the world, and tales of a society’s emergence or demise. Myth expresses humanity’s courageous adventures to overcome the weight of the past through trials and tribulations that has led us to the present.
Another power of mythology is its role as a medium of foresight and creative thinking about the future. Many of the most resonating narratives in mythology have a focus on expressing society’s collective fears and aspirations for the future. In doing so, myths serve as an active charter, setting a forward-looking vision infused with trials and tribulations that unfold along the path, en route to transformation of the individual, the collective and the world. One way among others that mythology does this is via the use of prophets and prophesies—narratives around potential futures that embrace the power of foresight, usually generated from supernatural or otherworldly powers of insight. With society today experiencing far-reaching change, this future-facing aspect of mythology has risen in prominence in the body of modern mythmaking.
This can be seen in film, for example, a main medium for envisaging planetary and societal futures. An excellent case in point is Arrival (Villeneuve 2016), which uses mythological motifs as inspiration to rethink the future, glimpsing new forms of connectivity between people, planet and cosmos, and solutions to modern existential dilemmas. Arrival focuses on the peaceful landing on Earth of the Heptapods. These are a mysterious extra-terrestrial species who resemble a mix of cephalopods (octopi, squids, etc) and humans, reminiscent of the theriantropic half-animal, half-human figures that have played such a lead role in mythology historically.
The lead human character in the film, the linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), eventually deciphers their language, and through conversing with them is able to learn the purpose of their visit to Earth—to relay to humanity a prophecy that 3000 years from now the Heptapods will depend on our support for their survival. The full nature of their future existential crisis, how humanity could be in a position to get them through it, or indeed the full nature of the Human-Heptapod future relationship, is left to the imagination. But their prophetic message goes further.
Characteristic of the classic prophet archetype, the Heptapods convey an unwelcome truth—that the reason they are showing up now is that the future of humanity itself will face an existential risk in the imminent future, and that humanity must change its trajectory if we and our cosmic neighbours are to avoid devastation or extinction. The nature of this crisis on future Earth is likewise not elaborated, with one left to infer possible causes, whether the spectre of further world wars, runaway ecological decline, etc. Arrival combines a rich tapestry of symbolic language and imagery, together with the power of prophecy and future thinking to motivate those in the film and today’s real world human collective to act and change in the present. The following are three mythic insights which I took away from the film.
Singularity and consciousness
The relation between time and consciousness has been an enduring topic of mythology across cultures and eras. As noted by Campbell repeatedly in The Power of Myth, “Eternity is that dimension of here and now that thinking in temporal terms cuts out” (84); “The concept of time shuts out eternity” (280); “The experience of eternity right here and now … is the function of life” (85). The film Arrival does an amazing job of delving into this. In particular, it explores ways in which language shapes thought and perception, particularly around time and how we experience it. As noted above, the Heptapods come with a prophetic message about the future, both theirs and ours. But it is the nature of their language from where the breakthrough really happens.
The Heptapods communicate through a black ink-type material jettisoned from the tips of their tentacles, forming circle-based characters that float in the air like a dark grainy mist, for just a brief moment before disappearing. Each “logograph’ represents non-linear symbolic visualizations of concepts, rather than being mere characters in an alphabet. The circularity and singularity embedded in the Heptapod language reminded me of (aum), which, as Campbell noted, represents the cycle of life with three sub-dimensions of the character—representing creation, sustenance and death—and a fourth dimension being the silence underlying the three, from where the cycle emerges and to where it returns. In expressing the sound of the character one connects with this reality and realization of singularity—that we are one with the cosmic fabric of life and timeless. Similarly, in providing humanity their logographic ways of thought and consciousness, the Heptapods enable humanity to see a new consciousness beyond time, a tool by which humanity would then be able in the future to cut through the bounds of time and the limits of anthro-consciousness.
In using this new cultural form of language, humanity is able to glimpse and experience events across time, with visions moving seamlessly between past, present and future not back and forth, but in a non-linear singularity of consciousness. Importantly, the gift shared was not a hard technology to decipher the cosmos, but the soft power of language and culture leading to a profound mind-shift. Arrival shows the profound civilizational impact such a shift can bring.
Desire as a root cause
At the onset of the film, on the way to the first meeting with the Heptapods, the linguist Dr. Banks has a discussion with others in her convoy about how language is the first thing drawn in any war. Specifically she imparts that in Sanskrit, one of the words for war is gavisti, which means desire for more cattle as well as desire for war, reflecting the times when Sanskrit was ascendent when assets like cattle were central to power.
This was a prequel in some ways to the challenge faced later in the film where they try to decipher one of the signs created by the Heptapods which they speculated would have translated as “weapon” but was later understood as “tool,” with the gift of this new language meant as a tool by which to unite humanity and better understand time as elaborated earlier above. This sequence embraces the archetypal role of prophet character types in disturbing the peace, with the Heptapods triggering a series of tensions and near conflicts among world powers, as they debated whether to respond by force or by dialogue. As humanity came to decode the message as meaning tool rather than weapon, the situation was thus defused.
In this way, Arrival also carries a message regarding the need to unite humanity and advance a dialogue among civilizations so as to bridge diverse cultural assumptions and worldviews on issues like desire and purpose, assumptions that often lead to conflict and even war. The gift of the tool for Dr. Banks and the rest of the world is to a glimpse a distinctively different way of being and embracing the multi-verse of cultural worldviews, here on Earth and beyond.
As a result of the power of the transmitted tool to cut through the veil of time as elaborated above, Arrival conveys a message of transformation, that in moving beyond duality and focusing on the singularity of existence, one realizes that life is not a means to an end but rather that the journey is the end itself, and that salvation lies beyond a base drive to fulfil desires and power. As seen in the storyline, when once the tool is used, humanity realizes this singularity, detached from desire and finding self-realization in the here and now. This is experienced in the film as both an individual insight, but importantly also as a collective realization.
Arrival conveys a message of transformation, that in moving beyond duality and focusing on the singularity of existence, one realizes that life is not a means to an end but rather that the journey is the end itself
Ecological collective
The final key message I took from Arrival was the inter-connectivity and inter-dependency across species, expressed through the nature of our existential relationship with the Heptapods. In addition to our connectivity with species on other Earth-like planets that may be out there across the cosmos, it also strongly resonances with our existential plight here on Earth. The cephalopod-like nature of the Heptapods prompted for me analogies with the mysterious octopi and squid deep in our oceans, the study of whom has given dazzling new insights into our understanding of other forms of consciousness, beyond our narrow human sphere.By focusing on the future challenge of solidarity with neighbours across the universe, Arrival also generates analogies to ethical dilemmas we face in the here and now—our role within and responsibility to the “ecological collective.” Do we leave the Heptapods to their own demise, or do we stand in solidarity? The same, of course, can be said today of our fellow Earth inhabitants here at home. The Heptapods embody and symbolize this message of cross-species dependency and shared destiny.
In doing so, Arrival provides glimpses into a new ecological compact, based on the responsibility of humanity to transform our ways of life and worldviews. Unlike many dystopian tales of the future, Arrival provides a hopeful message of humanity’s ability to overcome our own insecurities and grasp a broader reality, of the existential value inherent in ecosystems and the diversity species on Earth and beyond, and of the future epistemic position of Earth as but one sphere in a vast cosmic ecosystem.
The collective journey
Science fiction has emerged as a main medium for storytelling around mythic futures, foresight and transformation. Arrival is a case in point, brilliantly using mythic constructs to weave past, present and future into a singularity of insight into the evolving nexus between individual, society, Earth and the cosmos. As always, a view to the stars and our cosmic horizon allows in Campbell’s words, “the imagination to go forth … a whole new realm for the imagination to open out and live its forms” (billmoyers.com, “Ep. 1: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth: The Hero’s Adventure”). The mythic imagination serves as a portal to the future, as humanity seeks a path through our planetary crisis. Building a collective future for people and planet is the “collective hero’s journey” of our time.
MythBlast authored by:
Kishan Khoday is a Fellow at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, serving in a pro-bono capacity to support research and analysis of the role of mythology in advancing goals of sustainability and resilience. A planetary scientist and international lawyer, Kishan has practiced with the United Nations for over 25 years, leading local cooperation with communities, governments and change makers to combat inequality, advance nature-based solutions and develop capacities for transformation change. Kishan has been a thought leader on the nexus of nature, culture and development, having traveled to over fifty countries and serving in UN country assignments across Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and the Caribbean.
This MythBlast was inspired by Myth & Meaning and the archetype of The Prophet.
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This Week's Highlights
"The Aristotelian katharsis is a “cleansing” of the mind of its practical fears and desires by an opening of the heart, through simultaneous experiences of humanistic pity and metaphysical terror, to the transpersonal sentiment of compassion."
-- Joseph Campbell
Myth and Meaning, 171