The Blackberry Walk

[A few spoilers for Future Boy Conan's ending ahead, proceed with some caution] The big bad is defeated and Lana's grandfather reteaches the knowledge of solar energy to the liberated Industria. The husk of a city is revivified and the many gizmos and gadgets, through whose arrogance the world was once kneecapped into disarray, were brought to life once more. Once such gadget was the hologram room. Dr Lao in his deaf blind state shepherded our triumphant heroes into a world which few Industrians would've ever truly seen - a natural grassy world. An inauthentic simulation full with vivid lush fields, the chirping of both birds and children, and a sense of the great outdoors. The children, who have never come into contact with such magic, are amazed they have been transported into such a world. Wrapped up in their enchantment, Dr Lao solemnly asks of them to try and touch something. Conan goes up to the tree and falls through. Jimsy tries to catch a butterfly to no avail. And when a child runs through Lana, she's left in deep frightened shock. This world isn't real - this world is inauthentissimo. And even though our eyes and ears are easily fooled, just as I get wrapped up in watching Conan, the sense of touch is not. Touch - our ability to feel something physical - is the sense which acts as judge on reality. When we understand something, we grasp the truth, we attain the truth, we just catch on, you know. Only by reaching out and feeling the world can we tell what is real from what is fake. Miyazaki himself embodied this idea in a documentary he made with NHK. The lucky man got transported in old biplanes from Paris to Morocco in honor of his hero Saint-Exupery. His final destination was an abandoned air strip with a small dry walled keep. From the top of the keep, he talked about how with ancient monuments like castles and building, you have to touch them to truly understand it. Pictures can be seen online - or even in yonder year photographed or painted. But such 2D representations don't show the whole picture. They don't show the depth. You can't get a feel for it. Only through touch can reality reveal itself. And many are afraid to interact with the world, instead seeing the world as akin to a computer screen - a stream of sound and vision. However, if you incorporate some touch sensation into your experience, suddenly you're interacting with the world and emeshing yourself within it instead of being a detached observer. The next scene was even cooler. Dr Lao, the wise old man, came out with this banger: kimi tachi kosou hontou no taiyou ga hagakunda na shounen nanda (or something thereabouts) which translated is "you kids are kids who have grown up beneath the true sun". Isn't that fucking cool. In every ancient culture the sun is god or a god - sun worship is nearly always present at the dawn of religious thought. The three kids, albeit to differing extents, arose out of more 'primitive' cultures which are closer to nature - Lana from an agrarian one and Jimsy and Conan from hunter-gatherer cultures. Understanding nature - being in touch with nature - syncs you with nature and helps you understand god. Sun gods typically have a masculine fatherly bent, beaming down morality and order into one's life. As Dr Lao points out, Conan understands: he bathes beneath the true sun - the god of nature. His laws derive from nature itself, not the phony authority of the state, the fake sun. The fake sun of the state has been growing in luminosity since the dawn of the 20th century. Religious belief were eroded from a constant downpour of enlightenment values and positivistic ideas, only to be further obliterated by bombing both world wars. In it's place through fascist, communist, and even our liberal societies, came the god of the state. The state who through the complexities of society gives sustenance, just as the heavens once brought rain to mother nature to provide food. The state who provides salvation through welfare schemes. The state who holds the jail keys to give sinners a taste of hell. This is the fake sun. Take a normal man from Industria or say London and take him out into mother nature and he wouldn't have a clue what to do. Praying to the fake sun takes you out of tune with nature, forever distancing ourselves from mother nature who brought us into this world. But at some point mankind must realise that it isn't "cool" to not get along with your mother and that to baby her and patronise her with misconceived ideas like environmentalism is also a misunderstanding. Nature is always strongest. Just like the finale of the High Harbour arc when the tides of battle were turned by a great tsunami which extinguished the light and power of the fake sun. The fake sun after all resides on Earth and is vulnerable to attack. In this era of coronavirus too, we see mother nature as bringing these fake suns to their knees. We try desperately to suppress and hold back the great paganistic power of nature through the fake sun's right arm - technology - yet the true sun's chaotic self-organising systems always shines through. The true sun, after all, is far more powerful, adaptive and authentic. Conan-tachi, by virtue of being born under the true sun are in touch with nature and their own nature. They understand the world in a far more authentic way: what is right and what is wrong - true and false. They're souls who burn brightly without being forged into a tool of the state. They will birth the ancient into the present and usher in a new era.