Meditations on 2001 A Space Odyssey's "Black Monolith"

marble represented exactly what it was, a massive slab of obviousness, something that could not be ignored if one was consciously present within the room. however, it represented something more. it hypothetically put forward how we evolved from apes to humans, as despite it being so obvious, one does have to be consciously aware to detect a change in one's environment -- to detect a spontaneous black slab that appears out of nowhere. what I think kubrick may have been illustrating was how we transitioned from a lesser state of awareness, into something more. from a primal and survival-based intelligence level, they live in the world and see it as they have always seen it. then, one day, they see something in a way which they cannot describe. a way which captivates them in a manner which supercedes all that in the background. the apes have their first intelligently conscious moment. the black slab was so sudden and so out-of-nowhere, that there was no way to not perceive it with intense reactional response, elevating one's self from a lower conscious level to realize human potential. to realize that one can use objects as weapons. to interact with the world in an evolutionary manner. kubrick was describing the birth of conscious intelligent life.

just as the apes, the bones-as-a-weapon realization and the rocky, wild and unconquered landscape acted as an allegory for where conscious awareness found itself, the ending "room" is the same. a fully civilized, cultured man surrounded by pleasant bright white light in an ordered and structured room. Whereas before the sun was the only source of light, now the source is man-made. The world in which the apes found themselves was completely out of their control and foreign, whereas the room the 'futureman' finds himself within is completely of his (in the species sense) own creation and understanding.

just as before, this man sees a black slab appear out of nowhere. he chases it around the room, getting older and older as he does. as before, the black slab represents something in which to call attention to and inspire evolutionary reaction. however, as a being already evolved, it is perplexing to understand it's context in this room. the man is chasing the meaning to his own life, from a grander perspective. inspiration personified as a cold metallic slab. the futureman is chasing this until he dies, but with every chase, he finds himself ending up at a goal, with no memory of how he found himself there. his only memory was standing at his previous position, looking out at the end-goal. then he finds himself at the end-goal, only to not have actually ended anything. ironically, he finds himself once again on the chase, immediately focusing on the end-goal, until his physical body runs out of life. yet even on his deathbed, at the very last moment, with his very last ounce of strength, the futureman sees this black slab once more and MUST reach out to it, must reach the end-goal, always searching.

this man represents what we are as a human species at the present moment, 1% away from complete control, but it always seemingly escapes it. kubrick's only explanation is indirect, as he eventually zooms into the black slab and transitions into space. we live on earth, we look at space, a massive beautiful black slab, and it drives us. space isn't the actual root drive of humanity, it just represents something that makes us realize our own subjectivity and scale. something so massive, so incomprehensible -- it's existence is a symbol for human ambition. like the black slab, unexplainable, yet we must understand. as illustrated in the final room though, the pursuit will kill us and only in our last moment will we ever feel complete, as death is the only end-goal that can be reached with complete satisifaction. fading once again back into the chaotic world which we so often try to pretend doesn't exist, so we build white rooms of cutting edge architecture to hide us from the scary black space, representing the majority of existence which we do not have wrapped around our finger. we hide from chaos and disorder. but it always exists. death exists, space exists and everything beyond our perspective exists and it is out of our control, and as the apes did in the beginning of the film, we go insane at these realizations, just as the futureman drove himself to death in pursuit of an explanation for what is inherently unexplainable and chaotic, all order nothing but one flower in a field of trillions of weeds, which are slowly creeping in.