Transformers and Freedom
I watched the new Transformers movie a few days after its release. I wasn’t a huge fan as a kid, but it was still a fun movie. It was never boring, and although the plot was naturally a bit thin it was, IMHO, the perfect summer blockbuster film.
A theme that came up several times in the movie involved human beings and freedom. Optimus Prime’s fellow Autobots and Megatron both questioned Prime’s desire to “save the humans”. The question was raised: Why bother? When Prime and Megatron battle, Megatron says that “humans don’t deserve to live,” and Prime replies “They deserve to choose for themselves!” Earlier, one of the Autobots wonders why they’re bothering to save the humans, since they are (he says) a primitive and violent race. Prime responds by speaking one of his most famous lines: “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”1
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Freedom to choose seems to be the supreme value expounded in the movie. Free choice is, of course, important, and real. As a famous philosopher said, “most people -outside of asylums and graduate schools- would consider it not only true, but certainly and obviously true”. (He wasn’t talking about free will, but the quote still applies nonetheless!) With the freedom to choose, many people will tragically choose evil. In fact, we all choose evil (anything less than truly good) often … daily, even.
Discuss: What do you think the base human nature is? Good? Evil? Neutral? Why? Is freedom really the ‘ultimate’ value, or have we overemphasized individuality in our western society?
1 Pointless trivia: Apparently he never actually said this on the old cartoon show, but the saying was printed on the “tech spec” card that was included in the box with his toy.
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I don’t necessarily think that freedom of choice or free will is a bad thing. And I don’t believe that when faced with a choice human nature will choose evil all the time. Freedom is a great gift given to all of us, for example I know that I have freedom in Christ, that my sins are forgiven and God loves me, that allows me a lot of freedom and ultimately living in that freedom dictates the choices I make in my life.
Freedom is “an inalienable right”. So I guess Optimus Prime and Thomas Jefferson see eye to eye on that one. So, freedom is given by God and if given by God, it’s for everyone, everywhere. The base nature of people is (to me) at best unpredictable. Sometimes we as a people are capable of such beauty and such good. And then, we can do such horrific things and have a heart that’s truly wicked. I think that’s because, unlike most modernists, I know that God made people. Made them “in his image” and that’s where we get the beauty and goodness. But he granted freedom. And that’s where we get the ugly; we can choose and we all at some point, choose wrong. So, we’re a mixed bag I think. But no matter how much our good might outweigh the bad, it’s still so far, so very far from the bright-light holiness of God. That’s why jesus is the only one who offers a path of salvation without having to work for it. We can try, but he knows we won’t succeed. So, he offered it as something free to us. Now that I think about it, freedom is actually pretty dangerous.