Tuesday 22 April 2014

Divergence over Convergence in a New World Order

More dystopian perspectives and programming for the youth of today


"You're different. You don't fit into a category. 
They can't control you. They call it Divergent.”

The programming continues with another recent movie ‘Divergent’ directed by Neil Norman Burger who gave us the pseudo-documentary Interview with the Assassin (2002), the period drama The Illusionist, and the 2011 thriller Limitless. The movie is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by the American author Veronica Roth.

I wanted to comment on this movie purely in relation to the ‘dystopian themes’ contained within its plot, as once again we have the classic ‘programming’ of a mainly young audience, to not only accept a future based on massive surveillance, but to ‘expect’ a possible future scenario that is becoming more obvious as Hollywood churns out these types of films. I am not saying Roth has an agenda, I doubt it, but the film has some common themes found in other ‘best seller’ novels (probably because its sells books?). This review will be a shorter one in comparison to the usual dissection of films, mainly due to the simplicity of the material inside this story.

The movie is set in a post apocalyptic Chicago (Roth’s home) hundreds of years after a ‘world war’ that has devastated and changed the surface of the planet. Oh what a surprise, another apocalyptic war. It’s another movie that is offering a simple message – ‘to expect another ‘big war’ no too far in the future. Mind you this is ‘not prophecy’ but simple observation, especially when we see what is currently unfolding in the Crimea as I write. 

Post 'World War Three' Chicago
The film starts by showing a Chicago (above), which has been given the Libyan and Syrian ‘treatment’, as Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) the main character in the plot explains “that after a great war, society was divided into five separate areas called factions to maintain order.” That ‘order’ is of course an interpretation of the ‘New World Order’.

Both Beatrice and her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) are children from the Abnegation faction that seem to be the ‘peace keepers’ of the new Chicago – and as I’ll focus on later, even the word ‘faction’ epitomises ‘separation’.

A wall of ‘mega proportions’ surrounds a futuristic Chicago, and as they say in the film, this is to keep out what ever is ‘out there’. Just as countries and regimes the world over, today and since ancient times have built walls to ‘separate’ themselves from what they fear is out there. Israel (below) is one example.
A walled Chicago
It seems that Roth has managed to throw into the mix a bit of Rowling’s Harry Potter, with its ‘four houses’ and a ‘sorting ceremony’, in the form of ‘chemically induced’ test and ‘blood-letting’ ceremony (ancient Greco-Roman style) to decide what ‘Faction’ the 16 year old initiates go into. It’s another ‘temple-like’ ritual performed not in a Gothic school but this time a post-hellenistic style arena.
Of course some of the themes in Divergent are very much similar to the Hunger Games book and films, not because it’s a ‘popular narrative’, but because this is an actual ‘projected future’, and agenda that could play out in this century. See my review of Catching Fire here.

The graphics used on the book cover are also not too far away from the Hunger Games covers, and as those that have read Roth’s books will know, that there is also a trilogy at work here – Divergent, Insurgent and the Allegiant. The language is ‘so Orwellian’ and the teens that watch this type of film or read such books have no idea, despite the positive end to this novel. The fact that some one labelled ‘insurgent’ may well be a person who desires to be free from oppression never gets mentioned in the global news speak.
The five factions that futuristic Chicago has been split into also reminded me in theme of the 1976 movie Logan’s Run, where society was also broken into factions and humans were ‘removed’ at the age of 30 (for those old enough to remember the original Michael York version). In Logans’s Run people are put through a quasi-religious ceremony known as Carousel, and some, known as runners, try to escape their fate when the time comes and it's the job of Sandmen to track them down and kill them. 
In Divergent, a similar theme of ‘eliminating’ those that ‘cannot be controlled’ and are considered a threat to the State, are also swiftly removed.

The Symbolism of the Factions
The obsession with segregation is another theme embedded in these stories and of course the education system given to us by the elite structures from its conception, have focussed on clubs, groups, ‘houses or factions’, grade bands, etc, as part of the ‘school day’. As the excellent teacher and writer John Taylor Gatto said of such subjects:

“For reasons that are both fair and foul – but mostly for fair reasons – we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system whose ambitions are endless. They want to manage every second of our lives, every expenditure that we make. And the schools are the training ground to create a population that’s easy to manage.”

The Factions
The word faction is merely another way of saying ‘wing, arm, branch, division, contingent’ even ‘cabal’ and therefore a new city (world) order based on such terminology would be in truth the ‘old order’ re-inventing itself, yet ‘again’. The five factions are given a positive spin but are instruments of that 'scientific management' for a people that no longer trust ‘being naturally human’.

In the narrative, the erudite faction is the scientific management faction, the most logical-thinking (clinical) group. In the film they dress in a dark shade of blue and look like your classic ‘administrator’ ‘scientist’. They could have easily been at home in the Equilibrium movie plot as the level of government administration that connected to the Grammaton Clerics.
Clinical administrators of the system in the movie Equilibrium
The use of the symbol for the ‘all-seeing-eye’ didn’t surprise me and it’s placing within the intersecting circles relates to the Vesica Pisces symbol, closely related to the so called ‘Divine Proportion’, (Golden Ratio), and connected to the Greek symbol Phi. It’s also referred to as the ‘harmony of Apollo’ and therefore is a symbol of knowledge. The eye of course is the eye of ‘God’ (Saturn in occult terms) and can been seen in the Hubble pictures of the Hourglass Nebula approximately 8,000 light-years away from Earth in the Musca constellation. I am sure this inspired the artists involved?

The Erudite symbol here, in my view, represents what seems to be the element of ‘metal’ , the stars or ‘alchemy’ and ‘erudition’ is the depth, polish and breadth that 'education' supposedly confers. I’ll come back to education in context to this film at the end.
The Amity faction is meant for the kind and peaceful in the book. They grow crops and provide for other factions and they dress in browns, orange and yellow. Their symbol of the tree, ‘the tree of life’ is one that refers to ‘the beginning of the work’ in alchemical symbolism, and the tree is the symbol for the element of Earth (world tree) in some cases.
The Candor faction values honesty, and they dress in black and white. Their symbol is the scales of justice which if course goes back to the symbol of air, 'Libra' and the various deities (Maat in Egypt for one) that symbolise the aversion to chaos and the so called ‘bringer of law’. Truth here in this context is equated with 'true' justice, but as we too often see in our world, the two don't always come together.


The most fearless of the ‘new society’ according to the novel are the Dauntless faction. They are ‘supposedly’ the ‘protectors of the nation’ and are known for their bravery as much as they are known for their ‘policing’ of the ‘new city’. Their uniforms are black and their symbol is ‘fire’ and relates to the element of fire, obviously, along with the ‘flames’ that the new order has the potential to ‘rises out of’. No phoenix here this time folks, I think that would have been too obvious. Just the flames of rebellion tamed and used for the greater good, well on paper that is.

Abnegation in Divergent and Equilibrium

The main character Beatrice and her family reside in the Abnegation faction. They wear light grey clothes and are brought up to be selfless and do not value power, giving them the nickname ‘Stiffs’. They provide for the ‘factionless’, those who are unable to ‘fit into’ the ‘new order’ (the homeless population of the city). Beatrice's father Andrew (played by Tony Goldwyn) works closely with the Abnegation leader Marcus Eaton (Ray Stevenson). Roth says of the factions, “I tried to construct the factions so that they spanned a wide range of virtues. Abnegation, for example, includes five of the traditional “seven heavenly virtues:” chastity, temperance, charity, patience, and humility.”

The ‘emotions’ and ‘selflessness’ associated with this faction seemed to relate to the 'element of water' and reminded me of the somewhat ‘subdued population’ in the movie Equilibrium (above). Abnegation are the ‘Quaker-like’ faction and are shown to be a ‘problem’ for the Erudite Faction, as the movie goes onto to show.
The Quaker-like faction, with probably too much make-up there Shailene for a Quaker?
A motto that is echoed throughout the film, ‘faction before blood’ is merely another subtle dig at the need for the ‘State’ to have more power than the ‘family’. The Factions (designated by the state) replaces the family and its merely another form of ‘Brave New World’ meets Jung’s Red Book.

Five senses and facing fears
The factions are also symbolic of the ‘five senses’ (in my view) and in many ways how society has focused us on ‘convergent’ thinking through the 'analytical' hemisphere of the brain. ‘Divergent’ thinking, as the movie shows is not to be tolerated and comes out of ‘holistic’ associative thinking, that utilises both hemispheres.
Convergent and divergent parts of the brain
‘Convergent thinking’ doesn’t embrace the ‘sixth sense’ (intuitive communication) and is the very core of what we crazily call the ‘education system’ and the structure of the world as we know it. The exams kids are forced to pass every year are primarily based on overly convergent thinking. Don’t dare come up with your own answer to an exam question, even if it happens to be more 'truthful' or accurate? The Erudite Elite will go mad!
The Four Zoas (five sections)
Interestingly, William Blake’s imagery and longest poem titled the Four Zoas (The Death and Judgment of Albion The Ancient Man) was a private myth-cycle written in the late 1790s that hints at the 'connectedness' of these human 'states'. In this work, Blake traces the fall of Albion (the true state of humanity), who was originally considered fourfold but was ‘self-divided’. If there was a ‘fifth’ element it would be the ‘core’ of our being shown to be the place where the eggshell and the intersecting circles converge - the erudite. In the image of the Four Zoas (above) we have the symbolism of the idea behind the factions, senses and of course the primary four ‘directions’ included in many teachings from Native American belief, to modern psychology.

Of course Blake’s mythology runs into deeper notions of a ‘Gnostic’ thinking, but the idea is essentially that of ‘separation’ - symbolised through the mind, body, spirit and imagination. The ‘fall’ for Blake was the ‘division of these faculties' (these factions) that also featured in his epic work Jerusalem - The Emanation of the Giant Albion.

As I say, the right brain or ‘divergent’ can take us ‘out there’ into other realms of awareness and this is where individuals access their sixth sense, their intuition and their creative imagination. If your right brain is not open and powerfully functioning you can never totally locate or ‘see’ the ‘whole picture’ (use all factions).

Drugs and Mirrors
In the film Beatrice's is put through the initial tests by a woman named Tori (played by Maggie Q), were she drinks a blue serum that sends her (like all of the‘initiates’) mind into an inner world of ‘inner fears’. The drug induced dream state that Beatrice goes into through the subconscious, reminded me of the concept and themes in the 2010 movie Inception (below); A movie that played on the ability to ‘originate’ or ‘formulate’ another reality through traveling inside the subconscious and super conscious minds of clients. From what I’ve read about the second installment to this trilogy, ‘Insurgent’ has even more ‘serum inducing simulations’, killings and the coming of a new factionless government and society.
In Divergent Beatrice closes her eyes and then opens them to find herself alone, with Tori no longer standing by her side. She gets up and sees her reflection.
She keeps turning her head and sees more and more reflections. The mirror scenes are classic symbolism that infers ‘altars’ and ‘mind programming’ used in notorious MK Ultra. The use of drugs in such scenes also hints at the type of ‘behavioral engineering’ and programming that many have endured in the past, never mind the fictional future.

Beatrice’s faction also shuns vanity and therefore this is reinforced in her mind when she is drug induced to face her fears.
Altars and mulitple personalities (points of reference) for a 'Divergent'
As part of this sequence a rabid dog appears growling at Beatrice threatening her. She closes her eyes, looses her fear and then she sees it as a puppy. Her younger self appears, wanting to play with the puppy. It reverts to dangerous dog form again and runs to attack the little Beatrice. The older one (her true state) runs after the dog, and they sink through the floor. Beatrice awakens with a jolt. The results show that Beatrice can control her fears. As Tori says; “The test was inconclusive. You’re able to control and conquer your fears, they call it divergent”.

The Choosing Ceremony

After the tests the Choosing Ceremony arrives, and the Prior kids (below left) meet the erudite leader, Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet), who has an agenda as we shall see.
Join a faction or be dammed
Winslet’s character (above) is a cold blooded and ruthless ‘administrator’ of a world that ‘fears individuality’ or fears what they call ‘divergence’. Going against the system, ‘the factions’ is not a possibility in the new world and the Prior kids of course start that process for themselves by ‘choosing’ to leave their family’s faction for that of Erudite and in the case of Beatrice Dauntless; the two factions that are being used to weed out those that are simply ‘different’.

The Military-like ‘training’ of the Fearless
Beatrice choose Dauntless and along with other initiates, they are the wild ones, climbing to the top of the elevated train tracks and chasing after the train as it goes by, even jumping off a moving train onto a rooftop. Once on the roofs of the city they gather to meet with the Dauntless leader Eric (Jai Courtney) who gathers everyone over the edge of a building asking them to jump into a pitch black hole. He asks for a volunteer to go first, and Beatrice (the heroine to be) steps forward. After some hesitation, she jumps into the hole and lands on a net. She is pulled out by dauntless instructor called Four or Tobias Eaton (played by Theo James). He asks for her name, and she decides to call herself 'Tris' for short. Gladly Theo James treats this young lady better than the ones in the movie ‘The Inbetweeners’.
Facing fear
The initiates are set to begin training for them to prove they are worthy of staying in Dauntless. Eric warns them that if they fail to reach the top ranks they will be kicked out and stay factionless, unable to return to their old homes. The training and ‘militarising’ of the kids in this faction reminded me of every form of ‘training’ or ‘programming’ that makes the perfect ‘do as your told’ police officer or soldier. The Dauntless leader Eric (below left) is the epitome of the psychopathic, military-like ‘gone bad’ ‘character’ that too often gravitates towards such professions.

Of course Tris and Four strike up a ‘relationship’, which becomes evident that they have something in common. The majority of the film is spent in the Dauntless camp, showing the training, intimidation and often psychopathic attitudes of the ‘minds’ behind this faction. Fear is the weapon used to train these kids and ‘knock’ them into shape, we see scenes of initiates being pushed off bridges, knifes been thrown at heads and generally combat and fighting amongst friends. As we see later, the Dauntless are very useful to Erudite camp, because ‘Knowledge is Power’ when it is ‘enforced'.

The ‘Factionless’ then and now
To some up and not dwell too much on the plot, the kids are fighting each other to stay in the faction otherwise they become one of the many homeless, considered outcasts and therefore ‘unworthy’ of a proper life. The ‘outcast theme’ interestingly is a common one found in other movies that have projected into the future a subdued population controlled by the State. The movie Demolition Man starring Stallone and Snipes had an ‘outcast’ factionless ‘underground class’ of people that could not live on the ‘surface world’ because they had chosen not to be part of the ‘new order’ that has more or less eradicated ‘crime’ (see below). Directed by Marco Brambilla it’s a story that tells of a terrorist and his enemy, a counter-terrorism soldier that are cryogenically frozen and awakened in the 22nd century, when violence was purged from society, only to be replaced by a ‘happy’ peaceful ‘subdued new’ model.
The futuristic new society in the movie Demolition Man was a ‘microchipped one, where the population ‘required’ the ‘chip’ so they could obtain food. They were in effect ‘factionless’ to use th language in Divergent.

We now have laws and policies in the USA that also ‘bans’ people from feeding the homeless (the Factionless as such) and this my friends is the precursor for the worst possible scenario – the ‘Hunger Games’, literally! In more than 30 cities, including Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., Seattle and Orlando FL, and now LA, all  have adopted or debated some form of legislation intended to ‘restrict the public feeding of the homeless’, according to the National Coalition of the Homeless. America isn't alone when it comes to exiling 'the factionless' or homeless, the Mayor of Verona (Flavio Tosi) also wants to fine people for feeding the homeless (see here). As one article said on the net:

“Civil rights are often lost in societies by politicians scapegoating unpopular minorities. This happened with jews, gypsies, etc in Nazi Germany and we must be very careful the same does not happen here.”

In Britain we have nearly two million of the poorest families been made poorer by a manufactured below-inflation benefit rises and changes to the welfare system played out by government austerity measures (cuts). An analysis by Oxfam and the New Policy Institute found the worst-affected 200,000 families were losing £864 a year as a result of benefit cuts. But rather than come together, people are still easily duped into 'seeing us and them', 'the benefit seekers' against the 'working public', or the middle income bracket complaining about the working poor. Its all about divide and rule through manufactured 'factions in society'.
No need for fiction as the ‘Factionless’ in terms of the poor and outcast are being created by default today. See some of the articles and videos here and below.




The 'Factionless' today
Click Here

I’ve read some blogs and posts regarding the comparison of the Divergent trilogy with the Hunger Games trilogy, where some have said they’re not really the same kind of scripts and narratives. Of course not, but the same 'themes' keep cropping up in books and films over the years. Why? Because its in the ‘ether’ and the collective conscious mind. Holywood is selling the script and we are buying it. Divergent is a movie that reinforces the need to ‘suppress individuality’ and those that are a threat to the ‘so called’ stability or ‘order’ of the day. We have seen it time and time again in human history and in other books and movies, and much of it feeds into the sinister Agenda 21.

More Training and Scheming
As the movie goes onto show, Erudite Council members are secretly visiting the Dauntless camp under the ruse of supplying serums and eqipment for the final phase of the Dauntless initiation testing programme. In truth, they are always on the look out for ‘divergents’. Mathews (Winslet below) is looking out for those that would be a ‘threat’ to the stability of the new order and in the movie Equilibrium, we see the drug induced police state 'watching' for humans that can ‘feel’ and show ‘emotion’ in a drug induced ‘emotionless new world order’.

The police state and its 'watchers'
In the final part of the training Tris is knocked out by one of her fellow initiates and ends up unconscious and therefore thrown out of the ‘initiation competition’ towards becoming a fully fledged Dauntless member. She eventually gets up and re joins the competition, which takes them by train to a deserted part of Chicago where they split into two teams using guns on each other to locate and ‘capture’ their opponents’ flag. It’s a Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief moment in truth, and a secene that sees Tris and Four, of course, getting closer during this ‘mission’. It is a 'teen flick' style movie after all. As Four say’s to Tris when revealing his tattoo, “It’s been a long time since I can trust someone. I don’t want to be just one thing. I want to be brave, selfless, intelligent, honest and kind”. He of course is obviously a 'divergent'.
Tris and Four
As more trucks come from Amity and the Dauntless faction are off loading equipment, Tris finds her mother who as secretly arrived to the camp to see her. Her mother warns Tris of the erudite crack down on the Abnegation faction and that there is a plot to remove them from the ‘order of the day’. Sounds like history repeating itself?

Tris and her mum meet in secret - 'mums the word'.
The final tests are now upon the young initiates of Dauntless. This time more terrifying and harder to endure as they once again are put into a chemically induced state and have to face their fears.
Tris once again shows that she is able to do this very quickly which is what confirms to Four that she is also a ‘divergent’. Her fears come in the form of attacking crows and fire beyond the safety of the city wall. Tris shows in the ‘dream state’ that ‘nothing is real’ and that it’s ‘just an illusion’ (in her head) and therefore can easily ‘tap the glass’ of the box that is filling up with water that she is trapped in. Getting ‘out of the box’ is a mind trick you see, its all in the mind! She sees her reflection and once again tells herself, "This isn't real."

Getting out of the box - seeing fear as illusion
Faking her Fear
After the initial test, Tris goes to Erudite headquarters to visit her brother Caleb. The other Erudite members look at her with surprise to see a Dauntless member in there, shes going against the grain and showing her true ‘divergent’ colours. Tris tells Caleb that she thinks Erudite is planning to take over the other factions, starting with Abnegation. Caleb, now acting and thinking like a real Erudite, disagrees and maintains his devotion to his faction over his family ("faction over blood"). Tris tearfully leaves when she realizes her brother won't help or consider this revelation.

On her return, Four brings Tris into the simulation room where he lets her get inside his mind to show her ‘his fears’, so to be able to show her how she can ‘fake’ her abilities and not be detected. As more Erudite members are bringing in supplies to Dauntless, Four shows her a vial of an orange serum that is being used to make people more prone to suggestion and therefore easily caught out. 

Sharing the mind game
In the last simulation scene we see Four enter the house of his father of the leader of the Abnegation Faction, Marcus Eaton (played by Ray Stevenson) and punch him as a payback for years of abuse. A rumour that was been spread by the Erudite faction so to 'degrade' the Abnegation factions’ leadership (through Marcus), over all of the factions. 
As Four says, “The Erudite elite are going to be watching the final tests”, (on TV Screens) where all of the initiates fears and how they deal with them can be seen.
Thanks to Four, Tris passes her final test by not showing her true nature in the dream scape and becomes a fully-fledged member of the Dauntless faction. I swear that was the chair in the 80’s Block Buster quiz though (showing my age now)?
Give us a 'D' Bob for Dauntelss, er no, 'Divergent'
Of course, the real agenda is revealed when the new Dauntless members are ‘suited up’ and given guns as they line up for a ‘mission’ that has been planned for. The new initiates are ‘microchipped’ (with a tracking device) and marched onto trains, while we see a man wandering out of line, uncertain of who to follow, leading the dauntless leaders to realise he is a Divergent. The tests, the drugging and now the chipping was all part of the process of ‘weeding out’ those that can ‘think for themselves’. The man is reassured by Eric below (right) and then coldly shot in the head (nice guy).
Four 'faking it' and the Dauntless 'elite' looking out for 'divergents'.
The Micro-chipped Police Sate

 “The system removes the threat of anyone exercising their independent will. Divergents threaten that system. It won't be safe until they're removed.” Jeanine Matthews

Dauntless members are sent by train to the Abnegation neighbourhood so to round up the residents – just like any other ‘round up’ throughout history. The police state (Fourth Reich) has arrived to the new city of Chicago, which is a constant theme in movies over and over.
The Dauntless members all chipped and gun hoe begin rounding up the Abnegation members, but Tris and Four refuse to join in and fake their zombie-like trance, induced by the serum and chip. Central command doesn't work on a 'divergent' it seems. Instead they try to seek out Tris’s family but are captured and brought to the lovely cold-hearted Jeanine (Winslet) shown below. Four is taken away while she orders Tris to be executed. Nice people this lot. Before the mind controlled Dauntless police can shoot her, they are killed by Natalie (Tris’s mother), who rescues her daughter. Of course Tris realizes that her mother was indeed a former Dauntless member and another chase ensues.
As more of the Abnegation faction (people) are rounded up for extermination, Tris mother is killed in the shooting but she finds her father (below right) hiding with Four’s father. They, along with Caleb  decide to infiltrate the Dauntless headquarters taking the train back, all having to endure what Tris endured on that first day, jumping off trains and down holes and eventually shooting their way into the control station. The mind controlled police need to be ‘turned off’ you see.
'Divergent thinking' and 'creative thinking' leads to freedom
As the movie draws to a close, we see hundreds of Abnegation members rounded up and about to be shot. Some of the Dauntless mind controlled ‘officers’ have already begun killing the Abnegation members and as Tris enters the ‘control room’, (where the extermination is being controlled from via satellite), they fight a bunch of mad erudite technicians headed by Mathews (Winslet). Here Tris finds that Four (Theo James) has also been injected with the MK serum and it is controlling him to 'attack her'. She fights back but has to remind him who she is in ‘his eyes’. She holds the gun to him, and then to her head as she continues to reassure him, "It's okay, I love you." Four fights the serum and mind control, eventually helping Tris fight off the guards, while Matthews (Winslet) tries to finish the extermination process.

Without going into great detail a final fight ends with the Erudite leader becoming injected with her own serum, as Tris announces that she is a ‘Divergent’. The effect of the serum forces Matthews to release the Dauntless members from their 'hive-like mind control' as the software is deleted and the system terminated. If only eh?

The end scene once again has Tris narrating, saying, “ that they feel like the factionless, having lost their homes and loved ones.”

The film concludes as the train takes Tris and co outside the city wall to the ‘Amity’ faction ready for the second film to unfold. The movie leaves us with the message that ‘manufactured factions’ and ‘divisions’ can be important aspects of ‘society’ when used for the good, but when one division seeks to use others to remove any other faction, we have the classic coup d'etat and the usual ‘divide and rule’. Only a ‘divergent’ can utilize all parts to act accordingly and uphold all virtues.

Left brain - right brain and the bridge between both hemispheres
Convergent Education
The world in this movie is a ‘broken world’ disguised as a ‘perfect model’ that has restructured itself on values that rely on clear segregation. The Factions cannot ‘come together’ to act as 'one vision',(or  in one individual) or as ‘individuals’. Instead they are divided into ‘factions’ out of ‘fear’ of what led to the ‘war’ (the Third World War), what they see as human flaws. The population thus is 'controlled' through that fear. Out of 'fear and division' in society (in extreme cases apartheid), the people have to be categorized, labeled and ‘utilized’ like 'cogs' in a dystopian machine-like order. Its leaders 'fear' the ‘individual’ and the ‘non-conformist’, to the point of ‘insanity’, which is really no different to our so-called civilized ‘inverted’ world that we live in today. A world that too often fears what is different to the ‘norm’ and uses the arrogant and the uninformed to 'police' the thoughts of the masses. Divergent thinking is a means by which we can get to our 'uniqueness', its an 'essential capacity for 'creativity' and above all we need more 'creative imagination' in our world.
  

Whoever sets the norms, sets the ‘convergent structures’ embedded in what call education, politics, the media, etc. To categorize in this story, is through colour of clothes, aptitude, virtue and ‘mindset’, which is no different to catagorising through race and religion in some ways. The lessons from dividing people into factions are ongoing today and we are obsessed with it. As the author of the book Divergent says,

“I think we all secretly love and hate categories—love to get a firm hold on our identities, but hate to be confined—and I never loved and hated them more than when I was a teenager. That said: Though we hear a lot about high school cliques, I believe that adults categorize each other just as often, just in subtler ways. It is a dangerous tendency of ours. And it begins in adolescence.”

Yes it begins in adolescence, true because the education system demands it in many ways and parents too often reinforce what ever the system has told them to think. Western education and its focus on ‘convergent left-brain thought’ is the world symbolized through this movie and its defined ‘clone-like’ factions. Education by its very institutionalized nature 'separates' the individual, alienates and measures the individual, quite often against insane 'markers' that hardly ever consider the 'holistic' perspective, which can be reached through 'divergent thought process'. The 'State' in the movie is not a utopia, 'it’s a dictatorship' disguised as a ‘utopian model’, waiting to be turned on its head at any time.

Institutionalized and uniformed
Stand out from the crowd because you know whats 'true' not what youv'e been 'told is true'. 
Only a conscious (awake) mind can see through the categorization of life that we still have around us, never mind in some broken future. As David Icke writes of education in the Perception Deception,

“The system of what we call education has been structured from the start to program a student’s perception of reality for the rest of their life. The fact that it doesn’t always work is a testament to the power of Consciousness over programming, but with the vast majority of students, work it does.”

This ought to not be the case, and ‘convergent’ and ‘divergent’ thinking should be the ‘balance’ between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Just as the heart and mind need to be balanced in everyday life, the mind still needs to let go and give in more to the ‘heart’. Hence why Tris uses the ‘connection of love’ to snap Four out of the zombie-like state at the end of the movie. Fear and love can’t dwell in the same instant and therefore the message is clear, when Four says, “Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to ‘control’ your fears and how to be free from it.”
There is no real freedom or even true ‘freedom of thought’ in the current education models that are supported by corrupt governments and the institutions that finance these 'rigid' often insane models. For example, there’s nothing very ‘divergent’ about accepting the one tracked 'crazy debt based education system', through student loans, and obtaining a University degree just because it’s the ‘norm’- or because the system demands it? Come on students’ and those that have teens at this time, it’s time to 'wake up' and 'opt out' of the ‘programming’. 'Diverting from' or 'converting to' anything or model that doesn't celebrate true freedom has to be crazy.
Schooling or 'programming' the next generation
The ‘factionless’ in this story are symbolic of being the ‘free ones’ and in some ways they represent the ‘human being’ who does not want to be ‘fixed’ in a job, a profession, a ‘belief system’ or have a ‘label’ placed over their heads. In the next book/film the factionless play an important part in the story.

The Divergent (as in the movie) is ‘within us all’ of course, and it is our ability to ‘perceive the world’ through unique eyes and ‘unite all factions’, all virtues. Only focusing on one faction, side, hemisphere, camp or polarity is a limited ‘true ability’ of our human imagination; and that’s why I suppose the narrative uses such themes and words to get this message across? Amongst the usual programming and collective themes of a apocalyptical war followed by a dystopian future, surely the message of ‘love and unity’ will come through in the end?

Look out for my review of Transcendence next.

See you next time.
Neil
www.neilhague.com


See the excellent TED talk by Ken Robinson below


http://www.neilhague.com/viewpage.php?page_id=82

4 comments:

  1. Shine forth. Become aware and stay there! 87

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    Replies
    1. kami sekeluarga tak lupa mengucapkan puji syukur kepada ALLAH S,W,T
      dan terima kasih banyak kepada AKI atas nomor togel.nya yang AKI
      berikan 4 angka 1867 alhamdulillah ternyata itu benar2 tembus AKI.
      dan alhamdulillah sekarang saya bisa melunasi semua utan2 saya yang
      ada sama tetangga.dan juga BANK BRI dan bukan hanya itu AKI. insya
      allah saya akan coba untuk membuka usaha sendiri demi mencukupi
      kebutuhan keluarga saya sehari-hari itu semua berkat bantuan AKI..
      sekali lagi makasih banyak ya AKI… bagi saudara yang suka main togel
      yang ingin merubah nasib seperti saya silahkan hubungi AKI SOLEH,,di no (((082-313-336-747)))
      insya allah anda bisa seperti saya…menang togel 275
      juta, wassalam.


      dijamin 100% jebol saya sudah buktikan...sendiri....







      Apakah anda termasuk dalam kategori di bawah ini !!!!


      1"Dikejar-kejar hutang

      2"Selaluh kalah dalam bermain togel

      3"Barang berharga anda udah habis terjual Buat judi togel


      4"Anda udah kemana-mana tapi tidak menghasilkan solusi yg tepat


      5"Udah banyak Dukun togel yang kamu tempati minta angka jitunya
      tapi tidak ada satupun yang berhasil..







      Solusi yang tepat jangan anda putus asah....AKI SOLEH akan membantu
      anda semua dengan Angka ritwal/GHOIB:
      butuh angka togel 2D 3D 4D SGP / HKG / MALAYSIA / TOTO MAGNUM / dijamin
      100% jebol
      Apabila ada waktu
      silahkan Hub: AKI SOLEH DI NO: (((082-313-336-747)))






      KLIK DISINI 2D-3D-4D-5D-6D-




      angka GHOIB: singapur 2D/3D/4D/



      angka GHOIB: hongkong 2D/3D/4D/



      angka GHOIB; malaysia



      angka GHOIB; toto magnum 4D/5D/6D/



      angka GHOIB; laos
































































      kami sekeluarga tak lupa mengucapkan puji syukur kepada ALLAH S,W,T
      dan terima kasih banyak kepada AKI atas nomor togel.nya yang AKI
      berikan 4 angka 1867 alhamdulillah ternyata itu benar2 tembus AKI.
      dan alhamdulillah sekarang saya bisa melunasi semua utan2 saya yang
      ada sama tetangga.dan juga BANK BRI dan bukan hanya itu AKI. insya
      allah saya akan coba untuk membuka usaha sendiri demi mencukupi
      kebutuhan keluarga saya sehari-hari itu semua berkat bantuan AKI..
      sekali lagi makasih banyak ya AKI… bagi saudara yang suka main togel
      yang ingin merubah nasib seperti saya silahkan hubungi AKI SOLEH,,di no (((082-313-336-747)))
      insya allah anda bisa seperti saya…menang togel 275
      juta, wassalam.


      dijamin 100% jebol saya sudah buktikan...sendiri....







      Apakah anda termasuk dalam kategori di bawah ini !!!!


      1"Dikejar-kejar hutang

      2"Selaluh kalah dalam bermain togel

      3"Barang berharga anda udah habis terjual Buat judi togel


      4"Anda udah kemana-mana tapi tidak menghasilkan solusi yg tepat


      5"Udah banyak Dukun togel yang kamu tempati minta angka jitunya
      tapi tidak ada satupun yang berhasil..







      Solusi yang tepat jangan anda putus asah....AKI SOLEH akan membantu
      anda semua dengan Angka ritwal/GHOIB:
      butuh angka togel 2D 3D 4D SGP / HKG / MALAYSIA / TOTO MAGNUM / dijamin
      100% jebol
      Apabila ada waktu
      silahkan Hub: AKI SOLEH DI NO: (((082-313-336-747)))






      KLIK DISINI 2D-3D-4D-5D-6D-




      angka GHOIB: singapur 2D/3D/4D/



      angka GHOIB: hongkong 2D/3D/4D/



      angka GHOIB; malaysia



      angka GHOIB; toto magnum 4D/5D/6D/



      angka GHOIB; laos











      Delete
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