What Interstellar Taught Me: Survival, Love, and Selflessness

Our primal fear of death, love as a transcendent force, and humanity’s evolution from individual to collective survival.

Some movies entertain, some make us feel deeply, and then there are those rare ones that challenge our perspective on life itself. Interstellar is one of those movies for me, that lingers in the mind long after the credits roll.

People appreciate the cinematography, some appreciate the music, some appreciate the stunning visuals and storytelling, and some are drawn to the emotional depth of its characters. But for me, what I appreciate the most is how it makes me reflect on who we are, where we are going, and what it means to be human; that is what truly matters when everything else is stripped away: our fears, our hopes, and our place in this meaningless world.

I recently rewatched it and the three things I took away from it:

1. Fear of death is our greatest evolutionary gift

Evolution gave us an extraordinary gift: the survival instinct which stems from the fear of death. Not just the act of dying, but the anticipation of it. We often consider this anticipation or fear as a bad thing, as a weakness, but it is the force behind everything humanity has achieved. It is what pushes us to explore, to innovate, to adapt, to defy the limits of our own existence.

Because our collective intelligence refuses to accept a meaningless or unknown universe. However much unknownness it throws at us, we still find a way to take purpose from it. We are wired to seek understanding, to carve some purpose out of the void - just to survive and not accept surrender in the face of extinction.

And that, perhaps, is what keeps life going, our drive to continue to exist. Not just instinct, but hopeful defiance against the unknown.

2. Love is the force we overlook the most

Love exists around us every day, but we rarely stop to acknowledge its significance. We assume it, we take it for granted, we reduce it to a feeling. But Interstellar presents love as something more, something beyond logic, beyond time, beyond the physical world. We chase science and survival, but what if love is just as fundamental?

We often measure reality through what we can observe and quantify, but the greatest of all our human experiences: connection, longing, sacrifice - these cannot be fit into definitions.

I cannot just think of love as a byproduct of evolution or a common human construct. Maybe it is another force as real as our other forces, one we have yet to fully comprehend which holds the answers we dismiss too easily.

3. Survival got us here, but selflessness will take us further

To reach this stage in evolution, we had to prioritize ourselves. We had to compete, dominate, and focus on individual survival. But I think if humanity wants to move forward, if we want to ensure our species continues, we must stick to the importance of collective species and its collective survival.

The future will throw us problems where we must adapt, make choices that prioritize humanity as a whole rather than personal gain. If we think about this, we climbed to the top by looking out for ourselves, but we can only transcend by looking out for each other.

---

A Note To You

It is interesting to think about how our consciousness, this strange awareness within us, will continue to evolve. Will we keep pushing against the boundaries of what we know, refusing to accept limits of this lonely or not-so-lonely world?

---