{"product":{"product_id":"0801483840","title":"Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many","price":"27.56","image_url":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41id-FLa6pL._SL500_.jpg","url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801483840"},"comments":[{"body":"That tattoo is of *\"Ouroboros.\"* It is an incredibly telling detail, as it comes from Egyptian iconography depicting a serpent consuming itself. \r\n\r\nThis book covers the \"Ouroboros\" in precise detail (book link here: https://www.amazon.com/Conceptions-God-Ancient-Egypt-Many/dp/0801483840) about Ouroboros representing the amorphous disorder that perforates and envelops our \"orderly\" world and, in a perverted twist of duality, also represents the perpetual renewal of *our world.* How? It is built upon consuming ourselves through self-destruction and how that happens in a dynamic variety of ways, manners, and forms.\r\n\r\n**BONUS**: Lena says to her class...\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;\"The cell we're looking at is from a tumor. Female patient, early thirties, taken from the cervix. Over the course of the next term, we will be closely examining cancer cells in-vitro and discussing autophagic activity.\"\r\n\r\nThe term \"autophagy\" comes from the Ancient Greek \"αὐτόφαγος/autóphagos\", which translates to \"self-devouring.\" What else have we discussed that self-devours? An interesting question, but I slightly digress.\r\n\r\nThis is not to imply that the Egyptians knew of other worlds or life forms. It's to imply this self-consuming infinite cycle is *unbreakable* and almost feels *tangible* when looking at the world from a certain angle.\r\n\r\nAnd looking from a certain angle *is this film.* It's an intrinsic and tangible portion of us (cancer, failed relationship, a daughter's passing and the blame shouldered, a woman seeking to fill an existential void...) and our unique self-destruction that the aliens are replicating at their *peak function*. It's why the Bear is screaming in Sheppard's voice. It *captured* her final cries from her voice box, as opposed to her brain. This choice is *intentional.* It demonstrates that our tendency to existentially *implode* is *hard-wired* in an almost *hereditary* manner. \r\n\r\nEveryone shares some tragedy or internal crisis that propels us toward our own *annihilation.* We struggle to feel worthy of existence *itself* and that is so strong, it is passed onto a life-form capable of manifesting it with *literal* and *objective* corporeality. \r\n\r\nIn the very end, bullets cannot challenge the adapting creature's existence because it is *mimicking humanity*. It only falls after it *takes it's own life* and it's own submissive existence is forced to expunge itself unto Lena. It tries aggressively and cannot succeed. It only succeeds when it *gives into it's own destruction* and \"perfectly adapts\", so to speak. \r\n\r\nTo summarize? It essentially adapts flawlessly, as it is a clearly advanced species, but it adapts to a part of our humanity, which can only be expressed with physical distinction, that is the *absolute worst flaw.*\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I'd say you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide... and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives, we drink, or we smoke. We destabilize the good job. Or the happy marriage. These aren't decisions, they're... **they're impulses.** In fact, *you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.*\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Lena: What does that mean?\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Ventress, *after scoffing*: You're a biologist. Isn't **self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?**\r\n\r\n*The sound of a loud, brief, and sharp interruption is heard in the distance...*\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Lena: What was that?\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Ventress: **Don't know.**\r\n\r\nLook at the answers from anyone *potentially* influenced by the Alien. They offer that they \"don't know\" or show doubt when discussing what has happened, from a soldier to a qualified biologist. Is Ventress? I don't know but her understanding leads to the alien coming closer to the realization that self-destruction is humanity's strongest internal (and perhaps repressed) drive so it takes *several* transfers, duplications, and even assimilation to finally reach this conclusion and it profoundly changes the alien and normalizes it into the human hierarchy. It has adapted to our *instinctual* low-humming of how we must expire with finality to inch forward to *do it once more.*\r\n\r\nThe alien effectively becomes a living, breathing, and *physically existing* manifestation of self-destruction. The movie argues that perhaps we are as well, which is why everything is normal at the end (When Kane and Lena reunite and are *totally unsure* of their *own identities*) except for \"shimmers\" (yeah, heard \"shimmer\" before?) in the eyes of both Kane and Lena. We, as people, \"don't know\" because Lena encounters a mimicking shadow of ourselves that refuses to let her leave even though it mimics her. No, not mimics her... It's her self-defeating *effigy.* That instinct to collapse within ourselves comes full circle and the serpent eats once more.\r\n\r\nAmor fati, my friend. Just my two cents.\r\n\r\n**BONUS:** Absolutely enormous allegorical moment when Lena reads The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks within the film in a flashback. A hint is \"HeLa cells.\" ;)","subreddit_name":"SouthernReach","author":"AHeapOfRawIron"},{"body":"[Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt by Erik Hornung] (https://www.amazon.com/Conceptions-God-Ancient-Egypt-Many/dp/0801483840) is a good introduction to the topic by way of religious/cultic practice.","subreddit_name":"ancientegypt","author":"joehasthisname"}]}