The Zero Theorem and Everything Adding up to Nothing

by Christopher Barr

In the past the man has been first; in the future the System must be first.

"Birth, and copulation, and death.

That’s all the facts when it comes to brass tacks."  

– T.S. Eliot

The Zero Theorem, a Terry Gilliam film, is a tragedy under a multi-colored blanket of a humorous drug trip, quite reminiscent of a Gilliam early film, the brilliant idiosyncratic Brazil with a dash of his sci-fi marvel, 12 Monkeys.  The Zero Theorem is about an eccentric and reclusive computer genius that is plagued with the existential realities of the phony world he resides in.  He is a man without a home; a man lost in time and space and in turn, is a man convinced he’s entering the void of nothingness, down a black hole.

The world that Quohen, a bald, sick looking man, inhabits is a technological theme park city, where advertising is far more invasive than in Minority Report.  In both films, specific personalized advertisements follow one around in the public sphere but in Theorem it’s more like soliciting, it’s in one’s face, pushing and pulling, yelling and screaming.  It followed Tom Cruise in Minority Report, where here it sort of desperately chases Quohen on a face-level digital path that lines the many bustling, jumbo screen infested, streets of this circus of a city.   

Most of the people in this future world are adult-children, with immaturity levels hovering around 11 to 12 years old.  They all just want to have fun and plugin to the virtual world of useless simulacrum.  While dancing to hyper-jam, they hold their tablets close to themselves and film their face for others to see.  They are creating digital representations of themselves while in the actual presents of the very people in the same room.  This is using technology beyond the crutch and creating the ‘mirror stage’ of the Imaginary Order, in the foreground outside of the body.

The virtual reality depicted in Theorem is not at the realistic level as in films like The Thirteenth Floor, The Matrix or the holodeck in Star Trek: First Contact, but it doesn’t have to be.  The actual world of Theorem has a population of people as mentioned above that are immature, they are just happy to be out of their boring world and into a virtual world they can become gods in.  They are able to take their sexual fetishizations to whatever extreme they want and not have to get in trouble for it.

The computer hacker Quohen is using a form of video gaming to crunch “Entities” for the purposes that he is not made aware of.  He just functions as a cog does, without reason, without resolution and unfortunately, without fulfillment.

While Quohen is working on a formula, attempting to crack an enigmatic code, to determine whether life holds any meaning, he is constantly under surveillance by "Management", the authoritative BIG Other.  One of the cameras in the church Quohen resides in is of interest, it is mounted on the severed head of a Jesus Christ crucifixion statue, assuming the all-seeing eye of religious guilt set upon the earth by insane pious zealots and later weaponized by governmental overlords.  The film explores what has become pervasive in our own society - distrust.  We have become a society of people watching and being watched.  The Authority in society are investment protectors, they are money securers.  Their interest in their employees only lies in their worker’s level of mechanical productivity.  The superstructure is a product building system of money-makers, not philanthropic innovators.  Other than being a ‘tool’, the average worker in society is expendable, living a life decaying of meaning.    

The meaning of life is to live it, philosopher Alan Watts once said.  We have been told many lies and have been promised many things since our births.  The problem with the meaning of life is these lies have consequences that psychologically and sociologically plague most people for the remainder of their days.  Life has been built up with limitless possibility; it promises the individual can be significant, it promises that the individual can be celebrated for just being that individual.

The deep psychological problem here is most people become 'dots', they become insignificant in life and feel useless at times, they become autophobic to avoid thinking about their own insignificance, they drink, pop copious amounts of pharmaceutical drugs, they avoid, they escape, they play games on their TV's and cellphones between zonking out over series after series of escapist programming, they solder themselves to their mobile devices and addict themselves to social networking, all in the hopes of avoiding a dreamy nightmare of loneliness and despair.

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." 

- Carl Jung

The alternative - nurture and build upon the working brain in our heads.  The only escape from the banality of existence is through knowledge fulfillment and understanding how the mind operates within the brain.  Only then can we slow it all down and enjoy the little things like love, while we are contemplating some of the big questions in life like; what gives meaning to our lives, and is it possible to find true happiness?  Are we able to find some form of solitude in an increasing connected, constricted world?  Does the world we live in maintain a level of order or is it simply chaotic?

This revelation should not drive one to the trenches of nihilism, but rather toward the rewards of knowledge that can make life meaningful by learning everything one can.  Avoiding the lethargy of primetime television can help one open their eyes to other things, other possibilities.  Maintaining a life of faith is to live a meaningless life because it is a life that is about a lie rather than a life about living.

"The Church of Intelligent Design reaches out to that special you."

The tragedy here is Quohen, desperately hanging onto hope, has been anxiously waiting for this phone call, where a voice on the other end will tell him the meaning of his life; it will tell him what to do.  This is mysteriously religious based, where theists pray to a god that isn't there and wait for 'him' to tell them what to do.  This passive position allows them to forgo responsibility for their own lives.  Essentially religion allows people to be lazy and not try, when the actual meaning of life is that life isn't about us; it's about everything adding up to nothing, which is okay.

"First of all man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself." 

- Jean-Paul Sartre