The Vanishing Monolith that went Viral.
Its origin and purpose still a total mystery, the shock of the monolith’s straight edge corners among the weathered rocks had the internet taken by storm and we are still reeling in the steel monolith memes, that appeared apparently out of nowhere in the middle of the desert in Utah in the United States.
It’s November, and the internet has collectively lost its calm over a shiny, steel monolith that appeared apparently out of nowhere in the middle of the desert in Utah in the United States. A few days later, it disappeared into thin air without a trace. The mystery deepens, as a similar monolith appears and disappears thousands of miles away in Romania and then another one in on Compton Beach on the southwest of the Isle of Wight, an island off the south coast of England.
So, what exactly is happening? Who put the monolith there? Could it be aliens? Or is it just a weird art form? Conspiracy theorists have been burning the midnight oil, trying to figure out what the monolith could symbolize.
Well, with many theories and upcoming shreds of evidence to answer the above questions. The one and only question that we would like to answer is the similarity in the concept of art. With decades of years and miles away, Egyptian and Chinese civilizations have similar concepts.
Even though traveling merchants and couriers could bridge enormous distances of up to 3,000 kilometers. However, they could never have overcome the 8,000-kilometer distance between China and Egypt. And yet, these two civilizations, seen as the world’s earliest ones, developed many similar inventions, institutions, and traditions — not only concerning instruments of daily life but also religious rites like the death cult and other religious concepts.
Well… it is about having similar solutions to similar problems. When people feel an urge for having a stable roof over their heads, or cloth that embellish and protect them, they are likely to come up with similar solutions, eventually, almost every culture has invented the needle after experimenting with fish bones, pin feathers, or little bones. In addition, people came up with similar answers to abstract questions about God and life after death.
So, did some mysterious cult of people in California, Utah, and the Isle of Wight had a problem so specific that the answer would be to build a structure was between 10 and 12 feet high. And let it sit for the noticeable time period and let it disappear?
Well digging a little deeper it all gives away… at least a plausible theory that would give away.
The theory is that the monolith could be the work of sculptor John McCracken. There’s just one problem — he died in 2011. However, his son, Patrick McCracken, thinks it is very much possible that the late artist would leave his artwork in a desert. He told The New York Times that the news of the monolith reminded him of a conversation he had with his father back in 2002. McCracken had then told his son that he wouldn’t mind leaving his artwork in remote places for them to be discovered later.
In another corner of the internet, almost as soon as news of the monolith appearing broke, people began drawing comparisons with Kubrick’s iconic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is because, in the film, monoliths appear and disappear out of nowhere with no plausible explanation.
The movie based on a science fiction novel. In the Arthur C. Clarke science fiction legend, the monolith’s first appearance on Earth was three million years ago in Africa. It alludes to a mystical figurine that confers intelligence on the life around it and the book/film; suggests the monolith was responsible to save Great Apes by giving them the knowledge to use tools.
So what now?
McCracken could have made the monolith and placed it in the desert before his death. That this is just a time of crisis and people are having a weird coping mechanism of erecting metal monoliths mysteriously.
Well, this could have endless possibilities in the universe of 2020, but in Stanley Kubrick’s universe, the monolith’s appearance is “calling home” to say “they’re here!” When some species visited long ago has not only evolved intelligence but also intelligence sufficient to achieve space travel. Humanity ready to leave its cradle and is ready for the next step.
The shock of the monolith’s straight edges and enigmatic erection among unlikely places had the apes warily circling it as prefiguring man reaching “for the stars”. Here the man even after reaching out for the moon is still figuring out the strange appearance and disappearance with various memes.
The monolith works in exactly the same way as in the movie. A bizarre object stripped from any understandable, knowable context, it offers no aim for the truth to discover, only an open-ended mystery. Far from being a flaw, the monolith’s unknowability is the very source of its power, allowing it to act as a sort of lightning rod attracting all beliefs and interests. It’s no mistake that these formerly underground tactics have since become a kind of “viral” marketing, which explains why so many people have reacted with wariness to the monolith, worrying that it might just be a lead up to a big ad campaign. Without its sense of possibility, the monolith is just another strange thing that happened.
The final line appends not merely to the discovery of the monolith or its copycat artists whose anonymity has added to its conundrum, but to our understanding of the human psyche in the light of the ultimate questions, it raises about the mystery of human’s nature akin to their universe.
