NEW DIRECTION

🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣⚫️ NEW DIRECTION Ed. No. 196

- OPPENHEIMER'S MASTER

SOME PEOPLE JUST HAVE THE VISION TO SEE

Christopher Nolan / PIC: Medium

Christopher Nolan the creator of a complex block of consciousness questioning films

including Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, Tenet and Oppenheimer

is recorded as making the following comments more recently...

'Nolan who is President of the Directors Guild of America, is less worried about the technology than the people using it.

"What we're always in danger of losing is our empathy and our humanity, whatever the new technology is," he says.
"AI is the same as so many technologies that came before, where, if it's all pursued for pure profit by corporations who aren't accountable for their human instincts, or there's no human accountability, everything's removed."

"So, [if] everything is just what Wall Street says, we'll pay the most money to shareholders, whatever; then we lose our community, we lose our humanity. That's always the danger, but I'm very much optimistic in those terms. I think we are all hardwired to protect those things. There's a point at which they become challenged, and then you have to push back, and that pendulum carries on swinging."

- Excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend article

"Epic Journey" by Michael Idato 27 June 2026

discussing amongst other things

Christopher Nolan's new film "THE ODYSSEY"

released in cinemas on 16 July 2026.

My response as a follow on to Mr. Nolan's view is to make an appeal to please start the pendulum swing to push back because human beings are approaching the edge of the precipice in their collective ignorance and a mistaken pre-programming that has us chasing some idea of worldly profits as the answer. This will never satisfy the inbuilt urge for what we are looking for.

We do so persist determinedly.

I recently happened to catch a YouTube video of a tech nerd having a go at Apple Elder the Late Steve Jobs. This IT Nerd was one of Apple's own staff.

This guy opens his comment by praising Jobs "Mr. Jobs you're a bright and influential man". To which Jobs says "Here it comes" expecting the criticism to follow. And it does. This "tech expert" then says to Jobs "...what have you been doing for the last seven years"? Classic stuff from those who live in a world of their own superhuman tech bubble. Apparently no idea about the real world.

You want to know what the real world thinks about these tech experts? Too many haven't got a clue about the public they are meant to be serving. That's right serving. They know all about their precious widgets and plug ins, the tech-wizardry and how “expertly” they just want to charge ahead to prove they are Masters of their Dominating Universe but where has the feet on the ground wisdom gone? They are leaving a lot of people behind and angry with their smart arse mindset and self righteous sales/profit orientated self programming.

A spot on response followed by Jobs. It made me respect the guy. Jobs wasn't only "smart" and "influential" he was wise. He says words in summary to this effect. This is not quoted verbatim but sums up his comment - [ I always see that it is my job to place the customer first. To provide service to the customer. ] His delivery was calm and cool. He had profoundly understood what the key is to long term business success. In other words rather than race ahead like the unplugged are doing they need to bring people along with them. That's what I understood from his words.

Jobs was plugged in. CONNECTED NOT DISCONNECTED.

We are no longer educated to see or value either humanity or the bigger picture. We want results/profits NOW. The priority is what is in “it” for us. We pay lip service to the ultimate importance of the humane. That is an incredibly greedy and self centred attitude to possess. This says something about how thirsty our humanity has become. And "possession" is what people who behave this way are demonstrating. They are possessed by their own darkness/ignorance/emptiness of the bigger more responsible picture. And in the long run this ignorance wears the price of our shallow wants. There is all too much greed to do what we want.

Where do we think we are taking ourselves I wonder?

We've created a world that is like eating cardboard.
When we starve ourselves of our own soul it is just asking for trouble.

Elsewhere on YouTube intellectual Stephen Fry in conversation with comedian John Cleese was discussing that humanity is like children playing on a beach in the Sun with our backs to a vast Ocean that is a gathering maelstrom. Appropriate metaphor.

A "Derecho"is a particular type of storm that is fast-moving bands of thunderstorms with destructive winds.

They can appear quickly striking mid American through to Eastern States and Canada leaving devastation.

They can disappear quickly leaving the Sun to shine again.

It sometimes feels that we are creating our own human version of a “Derecho”.

PIC: NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE USA

The warnings are out there aplenty.

We've just got to learn how to put ourselves in check by seeing holistically.
A tall order for small minds.

I'm an artist.

Aren't artists supposed to be “the prophets of our times”? (or so I've read, Ha!) The standing value/status of artists in our navel gazing/high tech/investment savvy world is about the equivalent of street sweepers. And there’s nothing wrong with being a street sweeper it’s just that no one listens to what street sweepers or artists have to say. We have been devalued to the decorative. Let’s see what happens when the artists start to go away eh!

That cardboard world is just around the corner.

I'm only saying what I see. Time to shake it up or is nature doing it for us? - Neville Williams

FOOTNOTE:

Recently when in Wellington NZ I Caught the first screening of Christopher Nolan’s new film “The Odyssey”. Nolan’s films usually fry your mind. His films are quite complex. “Inception” (spoiler alert) was a great example where we sit through a whole adventure of layer upon layer of complexity only to have it finally revealed that all of the upheaval we have witnessed comes down to the simplicity of a Father’s love for his son. The reveal was take your breath away stuff.

Through all of the mind’s games the heart ultimately is master. The heart enables the mind and not the way that humanity has tricked itself into believing that we are our mind. This is not wholly so in reality. We are something much more and deeper. The simplicity of our core is where we all want to be.
We are programmed to seek it out

.

The Odyssey feeds us with men’s (and here I do mean men’s rather than the masculine) lust for domination and power over their environment.
No wonder the Gods of Olympus are so unforgiving on them.

This is a story about rage, despair, destruction and revenge. I wonder if Nolan is holding up a mirror to the fact that we haven’t learned much about life? We just seem to repeat the same errors in our road map to living our lives.

And we keep feeding ourselves this negativity?

“The Odyssey” is certainly a Greek tragedy. Jeez they put themselves through some real pain. I mean why?

Is this to validate their masculinity? Were the ancient Greeks masochists?

There is something of gravitas and weight about Nolan’s films. But they are in essence “mindf—cks”. They are very cerebral adventures. As Masterful as he may be I find Nolan’s films generally overbearingly serious and at the same time intriguing but also a bit tedious and boring. The Odyssey is no exception.

Isn’t it a time in history where we rewrote our entrenched negative programming?

All our present mindset is doing is killing us.

And you think you’re in charge of YOO? C’mon. - N.