The UK stands at the precipice this very morning. If exit polls are to be believed, and it is hard to know if anything official should be believed anymore, Labour has been defeated by the most ruthless, institutionally funded, neoliberal Conservative government in British history.

In order to understand the potential import of such a result and the increasing, boggy gloom that the nation might have to contend with again, if indeed the exit polls are vindicated, we need to look back at the last ten years and assess honestly what the Conservatives have managed to achieve, or rather destroy.

Looking at the plain figures it becomes painfully, even shockingly clear that the Conservatives have engaged in an all out assault on nearly every part of the public sector within the UK. Police budget cuts of 20% between 2010 and 2015, with an ensuing loss of at least 21,732 officers (1), with even more dramatic losses among other police staff, such as 999 call handlers, community support officers and crime scene investigators (2) have been directly correlated with a rise in crime (3). The fire service, so deliberately and calculatingly maligned by the establishment after Grenfell, lost 38% of its funding since 2005 according the Fire Brigade’s Union (4).

Meanwhile the NHS, disabled workers and mental health services have been hacked at by huge strikes in funding, constituting the lowest year on year growth since 1955, 75% less than the previous Labour government (5). Legal aid has been cut by nearly £1 Billion pounds per year, a drop of more than 80% in the eight years between 2010 and 2018, affecting many citizens vying for justice in cases ranging from domestic violence to housing, welfare and immigration (6). Social care for the elderly has also been cut, while childhood poverty and homelessness have skyrocketed since the Conservatives took power (7, 8).

Quite remarkable in audacity then is the fact that the Conservatives have actually increased the national debt by 75% during their time in office, consistently repaying less of the debt than any previous Labour government (9, 10). When we look at the net expenditures during that period, take into account the overall decrease in spending on public services and include into our equation the intentional reduction in tax pressed from large corporations and businesses (11), it becomes clear that the Conservatives have essentially borrowed money in order to subsidise tax avoidance, while using their own borrowing to excuse Austerity as a necessary measure, a bait and switch of truly enormous proportions. In light of this data, David Cameron’s claim when viewed in retrospect,  that as a country we were ‘all in this together’ can be seen with an abhorrent clarity for what it was  – a lie deeply vulgar in its dishonesty and absolutely cold blooded in intention.

Ultimately, if the exit polls are correct and the relentless pressure of the media arms of government and their behind-closed-doors private Billionaire supporters have won, we can expect the human cost of the figures we already know to grow with a renewed, exponential viciousness. It is truly sad that a populace, born out of the struggles of previous generations to gain social mobility, basic standards of living and healthcare, can be so easily manipulated into voting against their own interests, against the very memory of those who toiled before them – voting for the very kinds of people who would happily return them to that state; suffering en masse, labelled as ‘the great unwashed’. The nation faced a crucible and it was forced into failure.

‘Ad Astra’ dropped in cinemas late September and has been a hit with critics whilst largely being panned by the general public. The film, Pitt’s latest lead, was written and directed by James Gray. At first glance, the movie appears to promise standard space based science fiction, but it turns out to be more of an exploration of masculinity, the relationship between fathers and sons (both literal and metaphorical) as well as philosophies like nihilism and existentialism. Ultimately, the film settles on a promotion of humanism as a final panacea for the void left, for many in the modern world, by the absence of religion and the codified meaning and purpose it once held.

Visually and psychologically, the film draws on varied notes – old tones with everything from the silence of space and the absence of sound echoing Kubrick and Nolan, to a repleteness of sixties and seventies styling; pulsating and psychedelic, often neon and dark. Beige carpets, pulsing lights and wavy patterns abound, at times a rather discombobulating collage. Maybe these images were chosen as an allegory for old ideas being reborn? Or maybe the film makers just thought it looked cool. And in that at least, they were right.

Pitt’s character, Roy McBride, searches for his father Clifford, played by Tommy Lee Jones, a fabled and legendary space explorer who we see for most of the film through his son’s flashbacks and video clips taken prior to the launch of his fated mission. Clifford resurfaces alongside a wave of potentially Earth – ending energy emissions, having been presumed dead in the outer reaches of the solar system for decades. His mission had been one of discovery; searching for extra terrestrial life and Clifford was the first believer, a man whose personal convictions lined up with the mission’s intent to prove that man is not alone and that meaningful contact with both aliens and a common origin (God) could be found. However, it quickly becomes clear that McBride senior was a man possessed, unhinged in his desperation for alien life and a unifying creator to be real.

Roy’s journey to recover his father and walk him back from the edge begins with a mission to Mars. The idea is to relay a message in the hope that his son’s voice will coax him, and the world, back from destruction. But Roy soon defies orders and rushes into a fast burn across the solar system, knowing that he can only find resolution in person. A son desperate to face the demons left by his father’s abandonment, the journey becomes a reflection, sometimes literally, of his internal state. Lab animals run wild and kill crew in violent expressions of animalistic rage. The computer psych – evaluations flicker by effortlessly, yet, in a sharp jab to the gap between a computer’s limited perception and the truth that often lies in the opaque depths of a person’s soul, Roy remains haunted by visions of his wife leaving him. And he remains haunted by things deeper and more painful still.

We soon realise that hidden behind his dispassionate affect, Roy suffers from the same aching, existential pain and longing as his father. The character exudes a deep, underlying need for connection and with the absence of that comes a void of meaning, a void he struggles to fill. The film isn’t really about rescuing one man, but rather rescuing the souls of all men. And without any answer, Roy on his journey has only the terrible, roaring silence of the black abyss as a companion. Silence and darkness in the face of an aching need to connect with something greater are the true antagonists of the story.

After weeks alone in his craft, his own state slowly eroding into itself, McBride junior reaches Neptune and finds his father right where he expected him – at the location of the last transmission. The older McBride is bedraggled but alive, a hermit at the edge of the system, sharing his casket with nothing but the floating bodies of his former crew. Longing for resolution, at least some tattered union, Roy pleads with his father to come home. But by now the old man, once hopeful in the clips we see at the start of the film, is broken. He speaks for the writers when he explains how he failed to find life in the cosmos and trembles at being truly alone. If we are alone, he opines, then there is no creator and ultimately no meaning. Clifford is completely overtaken by the awfulness of his lost faith, while his son Roy reasons that we can find meaning in ourselves, our loved ones and in the world around us. Ultimately, Roy has to cut his father loose to save his own life.

In many ways then, the film is really an endorsement of a Humanist world view in that man suffices where God was once held, the relative taking the place of the absolute. If man cannot find an answer from The Creator then he must choose an answer for himself and be content with that. The problem with this philosophy, of course, is that man clearly isn’t content with that, which is precisely why he sets out on his journey in the first place. To avoid the rather circular reasoning is to imagine that McBride senior, or anyone else who fails to embrace a Humanist philosophy, had never considered simply ‘making’ themselves contented with…their own self. Clifford seeks to find true life – not just life like him, but the origin of life, the absolute that can prove to him that his life has fundamental and not just arbitrary purpose. And he knows full well that any purpose he assigns to himself is unavoidably arbitrary.

On reflection, it quickly becomes inescapable that McBride senior’s conclusion is true and that his son’s self reassurance amounts to a kind of delusion. If man really was enough for himself, if his love for those that he loves and the sharing of life’s happiness and sorrow was enough to content the soul, then we have to ask ourselves why we universally and continuously yearn for something more concrete, meaningful and absolute? Why is the lack of connection with something ‘more’ such an unspeakable void in the lives of so many people? The very inceptive need to which Humanist philosophy claims to respond is entirely ignored and remains famished in the supposed solution. An acrid dish at best.

It is clear to me that man certainly cannot be his own saviour, because our innermost, our souls, demand and indeed need the very opposite of what we inescapably are. Even in the film, McBride yearns for knowledge of something eternal, unending, unknowable and yet knowable so that he can be satisfied and feel at peace. One only has to look at notions of romantic love throughout human history to see how real, universal and fundamental these demands are – demands that can never fully be realised by another, all others being as frail and mortal as ourselves.

In truth then, we have to ask ourselves what our real options are, knowing that self delusion does not and will never suffice. It seems that we are left with one of only two possibilities. The first is that there is no higher being, that creation is an unknowable accident and that our incessant need for satisfaction, love, contentment, reassurance and meaning (not to mention our very consciousness) is a fundamental aberration in an even more fundamentally empty universe. It would be hard not to give way to the very worst of ourselves if this is the case, for if there is no higher absolute meaning, then arbitrary meanings, rules and regulations need not be observed. Why, after all, should someone else’s arbitrary anything apply to anyone else? The second option is that the first option is utterly false, that we are not alone and that it is possible to reach what we seek in some way, albeit maybe in ways we hadn’t considered or had long since collectively forgotten.

Moreover, when we consider the second option, it becomes entirely possible, plausible even, that our need for union is, far from being an aberration that should be placated or medicated into self delusion, an essential part of us. Our deepest yearning that springs from our very purpose. Even from a purely logical point of view, this is more satisfying. There is a kind of clear unity to it – in that the thing which causes us the most pain in absence is what we must and are supposed to seek with the greatest fervour. And we are indeed supposed to seek union. For union, it seems, is the oxygen of the soul.

‘Those who believe, and whose hearts find comfort in the remembrance of Allah. Aye! It is in the remembrance of Allah that hearts can find comfort’. Holy Qur’an 13:29