Gattaca and Internal Validation
What if your value could be immediately and accurately quantified? What if your worth were simply a number? This is more or less the plot of Gattaca. Vincent, the protagonist, represents the ultimate manifestation of internal validation par excellence. The reason for this is simple. In a society in which all value is determined at birth by genes, there is no possible avenue for him to achieve validation in the external realm. He is determined from birth to be “invalid”. Likewise, there always still a part of us that is that remains a wounded child who felt inadequate or unnoticed. There is a part of us that feels “invalid”.
Vincent is unable, due to his genes, to achieve success in the external realm. He is forced to falsify his identity in order to pursue his dream. His external validation is not really his. But he stands as a reminder that what truly matters is what is felt internally. Epictetus once said: “I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.”
Everything we feel, all sensations of love, beauty, magnificence, wonder, amazement, and the whole plethora of infinite feelings is within us. Everything, as far as we know, is within the mind. There is nothing that is not the mind. Everything you have experienced or seen, everything you know to be real, must have been taken in through some aperture or form of filtration. Light is filtered through the eyes, sound through vibrations that are organized by the ears. These things are perceptions that can only exist through us.
If people think poorly of you, you cannot feel or hear their thoughts. If you intuit them, the bad feeling is within you. There is nothing they are doing that is making you feel that way. All of this is to say that within you there is, as Vonnegut put it, “an unwavering band of light”. As wrote in Bluebeard: “His situation, insofar as he was a machine, was complex, tragic, and laughable. But the sacred part of him, his awareness, remained an unwavering band of light.” The external really has nothing to do with you. It is a deep and ancient cry, the cry of the infant, the cry for love that was not given, for validation that you did not receive when we wanted it. For just one moment it would have been nice if you had been “seen”.
It’s easy to fault others, but life is complex and hectic. It is hard to take a moment to “see” someone. Well, currently we are creating a society that merely perpetuates this problem. It augments the narcissistic tendencies by creating a delusion, an illusory version of being seen, through instagram posts of scenic trips and tweets that sound clever and incisive. But deep down, these do not create the genuine feeling of being “seen”. What does create that feeling is a quiet, authentic, and soulful conversation with another person. A moment when the rest of the world stops and two people “see” each other. That is something of value.
I wish I had the answer to this conundrum. But what I can say is that it is someone that is not to be thought but lived. When we descend into ourselves we find an endless wellspring of value, but the true task is to then convert and sublimate this into a path we can walk down. With each step we stamp our identity onto the world, a unique pattern that is “you”, the self, Atman. As we manifest ourselves the external validation may come but it ceases to matter. What is internal is enough to nourish us fully. I wrote this with the understanding that it isn’t my best writing. I wanted to write something that would help me be seen. It shouldn’t matter if it is seen. I am proud of it because I see myself.