Is the Pursuit of Total Knowledge a Good Thing?

Is The Pursuit of Total Knowledge a Good Thing?

The Circle – Movie Review

Khen Lim

Image source: IMDB

This article was originally written as a point of discussion concerning online social media for my private English Communication class. Just as it was important for the youth to understand the critical dangers involved, I decided to reproduce it here for my readers. If you're wondering about the slightly different format here, that's because it was meant for students. 

In a separate article, which I will publish here within the next two days, I will provide the Discussion Points where I present twelve topical questions. Feel free to use them for your own purposes. When you do use them, I presume you understand about acknowledging the original writer of these articles.

Uncomfortably close in resemblance to Cupertino's Apple? (Image source: CNET)

In brief, the movie called ‘The Circle’ is adapted from Dave Eggers’ 2013 paperback of the same name concerning a corporation called ‘The Circle’ that hordes massive amounts of various different types of personal information – whether it is financial, academic, medical, sexual, social or personal – about every one of its subscribers who uses their services.

There are no short supply of reviews panning the movie ‘The Circle.’ For example, Glenn Kenny of The New York Times trivialises its real theme, coming up with something as puerile as saying, “Emma Watson has to spend way too much time looking concerned while staring at various screens.” 

David Edelstein of Vulture offered a similarly belittling swipe: “Most of The Circle plays ridiculously, thank God: If in 10 years we look back on it and think, ‘Yep, they got it right,’ we’ll really be screwed.” And then we have Paul Asay from Plugged In who said, “With so much to say the filmmakers struggled with how to say it, resulting in a confused and rather creepily off-putting story.”

Really? Ridiculous? Struggled? Confused? Creepily? Off-putting? I’d tell you what’s really funny about all this. The movie was produced on a budget of USD18 million but its box office grossed more than twice that, at USD33.9 million. Not bad for a “creepily off-putting” movie that came with an abundance of negative reviews. It even became director James Ponsoldt’s highest grossing motion picture.

I spent a few hours going through quite a number of online reviews of the movie but failed to come across any that, in my mind, properly understood the story or even the complexities that coloured Emma Watson’s character’s behaviour. Reading these reviews helped me to realise how all of them miss the point with the movie. 

In actual fact, the storyline carries a hugely important message that concerns all of us in terms of where our society is headed and whether or not that’s such a good thing. And then, we’ll examine it from the Christian perspective.

So I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about the kinds of things none of the reviews broached but before I do that, it’s useful to go through the synopsis in brief.

Synopsis

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) and Annie Allerton (Karen Gillan) in The Circle (Image source: IMDB)

After being stuck in the slow lane of a water utility business handling customer services, a bored Mae Holland (Emma Watson) finally gets the break she’s been looking for. Apparently a family friend Annie Allerton who happened to work there scored an interview for her at The Circle, a huge technology company offering social media services. Working there is considered a dream for countless people of Mae’s age. As Mae soon finds out, the incredible perks and amenities are likely unattainable elsewhere.

A somewhat complex and introvert character, Mae is a thoughtful and loving daughter and only child of Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton*) and Bonnie Holland (the late Glenne Headly*). Her father suffers from multiple sclerosis but the family cannot afford the medication and treatment. 

Being an independent spirit to some extent, Mae persistently rebuffs Mercer’s (Ellar Coltrane) concerted romantic overtures, preferring to focus on her career ambitions. But through it all, her heart remains at home and is very much centred on her father’s medical condition.

* Sadly, the movie was released on April 26 2017 but both of Emma’s character’s parents passed away around that time four months apart on either side of its premiere. Bill died at the age of 61 from a stroke arising from complications from his heart and aorta surgery just before on February 14 while Glenne died at the age of 62 just after on June 8 of complications from a pulmonary embolism.

As her friend Annie shows her around on her first day at The Circle, we see how awestruck she is with the facilities, amenities and all the perks and benefits. But even so, she is also taken aback by certain expectations of being part of the ‘community.’ Not used to being a flittering social butterfly, a hesitant Mae struggles at the beginning but her desire for success at The Circle drives her to get involved. That’s when she discovers what it really means to be transparent.

Co-founder Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) introduces SeeChange (Image source: IMDB)

Towards the middle of the movie, her resistance and scepticism finally give way. Attending her inaugural Friday rally and witnessing the stick-anywhere golfball-sized intelligent camera offers her a first-time view of Eamon Bailey and his pervasive technology called ‘SeeChange’ and how it would change the world. Horrified at first at the thought of the consequences, Mae eventually buckles and joins in.

As she succumbs to the siren call of community sharing, she spends less time at home, meaning she isn’t there to help care for her father. Knowing the predicament, Annie makes arrangements for Mae’s father to come into the company’s lavish health plan where for the first time, he’s well taken care of. Mae is obviously very grateful about that.

Mae finds herself in trouble and saved by SeeChange (Image source: IMDB)

But then, she gets into trouble at night, stealing the use of a kayak but capsizes in the Bay. If not for SeeChange alerting the authorities, she might have lost her life. With all of that in mind, Mae finds herself in a room talking to Eamon and his partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) who see the opportunity to convince her to become a living experiment for SeeChange where she will wear a camera and be monitored 24/7 (except for 3-minute toilet breaks) for millions around the world to see.

Gradually Mae learns more about how advanced surveillance technology is used. From protecting children from predation to ensuring that politicians remain transparent, she begins to understand the ramifications of what The Circle desires to do that is beyond anyone’s imagination. 

Mae with Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), inventor of True You (Image source: IMDB)

Along the way, she meets a mysterious employee (John Boyega) whom she later discovers is Ty Laffite, the inventor of the True You app that put the company on the map. Through him, Mae learns of the company’s deceitfulness but yet, she’s conflicted by the benefits that they offer concerning her father’s medical condition, which she decided is a priority.

In her journey with SeeChange, she witness its scary power and takes a few steps back, realising to her horror, its ability for destruction as well. Though she accepts that people need to be held accountable so they may behave better, her conflict deepens and despite Eamon convincing her that humanity has limitless potential if only secrets and lies are obliterated, she is torn between what she knows is right and wrong. In the end, Mae encounters dire consequences and soon enough, things go off the rails in a way she could not have foreseen. 

What the reviews generally say

“I believe in the perfectibility of man” (Image source: IMDB)

Most reviews that I’ve read take aim at the director James Ponsoldt and the lead actress Emma Watson. In terms of the film direction and presentation, the comments were scathing, calling it ‘opaque and plasticky” with Jeffrey M Anderson of Common Sense Media saying that, “it might have come from a computer on Prozac.” It was “horribly disappointing” since it “doesn’t really seem to know what it’s doing with those aforementioned big questions and issues.”

Some like Debbie Holloway of WHKW-AM accused the director of producing “a strangely ambivalent non-ending that feels far more like an early draft than a finished film” and as a result, “doesn’t deal with them in any meaningful depth.” Some others panned it. Movieguide says the movie was “somewhat schizophrenic,” offering an “unsatisfying humanist worldview.”

Emma Watson’s acting or her role are similarly panned. Anderson criticised her for failing to identify with her character and that, “when she verbally argues her decision, it sounds wooden and hollow.” Her heroine role apparently was, according to Movieguide, “a conflicted and poorly written character” that is “hard to pin down,” coupled to a story that was “undeveloped or under-developed.”

Movieguide also said that her character Mae has “too many contradictions” where she might be “sceptical about the cameras, the next she’s a self-obsessed media star, another moment, she feels the technology is noble and then evil again” and then eventually, “the ending makes no sense in relation to the rest of the movie.” Holloway went as far as to criticise her, saying, “her American accent is still very poor.”

Even Tom Hanks came in for some drubbing. Jonathan Rodriguez of Christiananswers.net said that “he never does anything that shows us he’s anything other than a man who wants to make money off of people’s addiction to social media.”

All in all, positive reviews about any part of the movie were scant. However a 27-year-old American viewer Gabriel Mohler wrote saying, “it’s smart, stylish and very relevant to our modern American culture” and goes further to say that “it’s being awfully underrated by critics.” He reasons that “it’s a little slow coming to life but that’s because it paints a thorough portrait of how easily people can be deceived by abuse of technology.”

Above all Mohler said the movie clearly demonstrates “how far some people will let themselves be deceived.” He also remarked that it was “thought-provoking” enough to cause the viewer to “imagine all the consequences that the film didn’t have time to portray.”

 Why the reviews get it wrong

Image source: IMDB

I’m convinced that many of these reviews lack analytical depth. There smacks certain degree of dishonesty and shallowness and whether that is deliberate or not, I’m not sure. There is some trivialisation going on and just as they criticise the movie, their own critiques reveal personal pettiness.

For a better ‘feel’ of the movie, I have provided the following backgrounder notes that might be helpful either when or after you have watched it:

-         Reviewers are no different from the movies; they both are products of Hollywood and Hollywood is a vocal bastion of Obama-loving liberal leftists and elitists. I hate to have to bring politics into this but it is important to take note. Both are inclined to protect one another’s political interests, which is why you and I don’t see any movies that are critical of Islamisation, the illegal migration crisis in Europe, jihadism or even the nuclear-arming of Iran. Yet we’ve come across one that mocks North Korea. If you’re looking for hypocrisy, Hollywood provides plenty of it and so do many (though not all) of its reviewers.

-         Although many reviewers generally liken The Circle to tech social media giants like Facebook, it’s no more than shallow lip service at best. None of them examine with any depth whether or not the likes of Facebook (or YouTube) trammels rights of expression (free speech) and how all of this might be similar to what the movie warns. In fact, the reviewers are silent on many contentious socio-ethical issues that the movie brings up that would be a serious invasion of privacy. If they did, they wouldn’t be so harsh about the movie.

-         With their political bias fully intact, reviewers spent very little time scrutinising their own kind. It goes without saying that the vast monopolistic outreach that liberal tech giants like Facebook and Apple wield in real life go unnoticed and unreported. And so, even as the movie shows this very clearly, the reviews (at least the ones I’ve read) conveniently ignore as if it isn’t important.

-         Whatever it is that critics say about Emma Watson’s acting, it is overstated, exaggerated or unnecessary. Though I liked Hermione Jean Granger in Harry Potter’s many sequels, I’m no fan of hers. Still, in all fairness, she acquitted her role without the ambiguity, woodenness or shallowness that many had criticised her for. I find her role and delivery well founded. Her on-screen hesitation and scepticism are vindicated and I believe she understood Mae Holland well enough to portray her accurately.

-         Contrary to criticisms, Ms Watson’s continually contradicting character is consistent for good reasons. First of all, Mae is who she is. Ms Watson plays that role accordingly. Mae is deeply conflicted inside because she is torn between the two things she loves – her family and her work – and that makes it difficult for her to arrive at clear decisions. Inherently then, her character responds according to what makes her comfortable at that time. It is also this that causes her to teeter from one behaviour to another and back again. The inconsistency exhibited by Ms Watson is as perfectly in character as any other good actress would’ve done so.

-         Some reviewers wrongly criticise Tom Hanks’ Eamon Bailey for lacking depth of character beyond mere greed. I don’t believe he has to necessarily or overtly show what is all too obvious in a conniving character like his. There is much of Eamon on display that gives us enough to accurately interpret what he’d be like behind the scenes. Since many reviewers associate Mr Hanks’ character as a Jobs-like demigod figure, then it doesn’t much to figure out that if you know what the late Apple founder was like as a person, you’d know what Eamon Bailey would be all about in terms of megalomania or total world domination. The Eamon Baileys of the world are all the same – they’re all greedy to the extent that they will do anything to achieve their evil ambitions. That is not difficult to understand without Hanks acting beyond what we already know. 

Why this movie is important to you

Image source: IMDB

This movie is vital viewing for people of all ages young and old so long as you use either a smartphone or a tablet or both. Most users have very little idea of how their private information is being used and their ignorance is alarming because IT giants like Facebook are exploiting it. With such level of ignorance and indifference among the users, it’s turned into a free ride for these IT companies.

Why this movie is important to you is obvious. If your private information is all ‘out there,’ then you cannot afford to be blasé or ignorant. Here are the typical assumptions people have about their involvement in applications like Facebook and what you don’t realise:

• “I’m insignificant to them”

That’s what you think. And it’s downright foolish. Probably there are tens of millions of subscribers who think the way you do. But all of them make up the bulk of Facebook’s subscription base throughout the world. And they’re all at risk in the same way as you.

• “I don’t think a few pictures will do much harm”

Pictures are hijacked or stolen literally every day but it gets worse. The pictures that belong to you are not just used without your permission but they are probably used to scam others. In many cases, people pretend to be someone else by taking on different identities courtesy of these stolen pictures for very obvious nefarious reasons. As a matter of fact, this criminal activity is rampant and widespread across social media networking.

• “I’m safe because my account is heavily secured”

The contents in your account may be safe from other users but the biggest elephant in the room is Facebook themselves. In other words, whether you like it or not, they hold all your information. This is because such information isn’t stored in your own hard disk but in theirs, which are all heavily guarded and located in remote places. They’re potentially your biggest problem because you have no idea what they will use your information for in the future. If the movie offers us a clue, then be forewarned.

Image source: IMDB

• “The bad things people say about Facebook are all exaggerated”

If you believe this, it means you haven’t done enough homework or you are not versed in American politics. Either way, you’re on the side of gullible. You’re useful fodder for them. The entire Facebook management from Zuckerberg down supports Obama, Clinton and the whole Democratic Party. And it isn’t just that; they are also fiercely anti-Trump and anti-Republican Party. If you put the two together, you can see a clearer picture. Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid politics once you know this.

• “I only use Facebook to browse what others upload”

Without question, one of the most infectious aspects of Facebook – and YouTube – are the video clips that people upload and share. However based on what you browse and pick, you are unknowingly being analysed in the background. 

From the choices you make, organisations like Facebook and Google will use data extracted from your personal activities (and information) likely without your tacit approval. In other words, you’re not just a statistic to them. You are a conglomeration of useful data that they can use for whatever purpose including ones that you won’t agree with. But you’d never know.

• “I only use Facebook to catch up with old school and college friends”

I used to think this way too until I realise that old friends like to share photos of yesteryears and that spelt trouble because Facebook offer tools and features that people can use to tag one another. Therefore, from an innocent photo, scanned and uploaded, people will be able to find ways to connect you. 

That’s when your privacy goes up in smoke because it is beyond your control. From a simple picture, a complete interconnected network of information can be created, linking you to everything else. And if you unerringly attach GPS data to your photos, you’re opening yourself to big risks that you’re not even aware of.

• “To me, Facebook is a good source of latest news”

To use Facebook as a news aggregator is something many people do but for all intents and purposes, much of what you read are titbits verging on gossips and rumours. The advantage of this platform is that under a single umbrella, you get to do everything including reading the so-called news. 

Of late, Facebook has been besieged by accusations of publishing fake news, news that lack credibility and are likely to be part of a hoax. Although effort has been made to remove them from their livestream, it is impossible to eliminate them. At any rate, Facebook’s definition of ‘fake news’ borders more on the political definition, which is anything political they don’t agree with. This include news that favour the political right.

Those are only seven points but I’m sure some of you can add on to the list. However these seven alone should be sufficient warning to get us started but it doesn’t end there. The problem is that online social media has become such a far-reaching tool that those who know have, in their hands, the most powerful new millennium tool to control the masses. So, while it’s a great way to connect to friends and family, it’s also a very potent unifier for all the wrong reasons. In the wrong hands, it’s not good news.

The movie ‘The Circle’ does not dispel any of this. In fact, watching it merely reinforces many of the things I am about to share with you. And they’re all happening right under our noses:

-         Veiled socialism at its core. The movement for social change comes in different flavours and names but all carry strong socialist overtones. And those it collectively aim to exploit also happen to be too ignorant to take notice. Using this movement to agitate against established government is where all the vicious and violent riots are at today. In fact, study the methodologies used by many of these movements and you will find socialism at its core.

Antifa violence in Berkeley (Image source: Left Voice)

The Antifa movement is a good example and their mode of operation is violence or stoking violence, whichever brings them the desired results. With the SeeChange real-time cameras everywhere throughout the world as depicted in the movie, this is the same movement veiled behind the impression of transparent online social media.

What this means to you: Those who escaped from socialist or communism states will tell you never to get mixed up in it and for good reason but the problem is today’s idealistic youth clamour for change without realising they’re playing with fire. With the freedom that their countries offer them, they abuse it. 

In short, they don’t know what freedom means until it’s gone, which is why all too often, they don’t respect those who died to safeguard it. Part of the problem likely lies in schools not providing the right kind of education to prepare them. In an age of complacency, nothing surprises me. Play with socialism and in the end, it will cost them their freedom, if not their lives.

-         Millennial ignorance. Most if not all such movements are aimed squarely at the disenfranchised youth and also the impressionable millennials because they are often the most vulnerable, gullible and easiest to manipulate. While the youth demand change for the better and are willing to fight to get it, they can’t tell the difference between change that benefits all and change that discriminates (and condemns). The latter is unfortunately what they end up supporting but they don’t know it.

Millennials and the liberal tide (Image source: rossrightangle)

Instead, they get embroiled in issues that are well over their heads and completely beyond their control. The movie demonstrates this very effectively especially when the two social managers approach Mae at her work desk to explain the ‘importance’ of being part of ‘the community.’ From the dialogue, you can feel how the managers really believe in their own tripe.

What this means to you: Make no mistake about it, we all want change for the better but only a fool would do so without diligence, patience and intelligence. Without diligence, there is no way anyone really knows what is happening – the background, the setting, the actors, the real versus falsified issues, the pros and cons etc. Without knowledge,

At this point, the youth must ask what changes are and aren’t good for everyone because most of them lack enough knowledge to make informed decisions. Many don’t even know what it is that they’re truly fighting for. That is why many of these movements lack not just credibility but sadly, a moral compass, which explains why the youth of today are too self-indulgent and inadequately guided in life.

-         Exploitation. All of these IT giants are far smarter than we give them credit. They know what buttons to press to get us frothing. They know exactly how to undermine the vulnerable youth and get them in a frenzy. They have at their disposal the best-paid brains in the business whose sole purpose is to win their souls over using evocative words, great mind games, powerful marketing, impressive glossies, terrific perks, amazing facilities, mind-blowing presentations and unbelievable showcases. You dream it, they’ve got it. They have everything to sweep the youth off their feet until they submit.

Is everyone checking their online social media? (Image source: hastac.org)

And with their power of reasoning, they have ‘logic’ to overwhelm any objections. They will drown you in every conceivable way that you cannot avoid them. Look at Facebook. They’re literally everywhere. Wherever you see someone working their phone, it’s Facebook. In the restaurant, departmental store, retail store, bus stop, in the train, public bathroom, wherever. It is almost impossible to run away from it, just like how The Circle is portrayed in the movie.

What this means to you: Powerful social media organisations know a naïve and vulnerable millennial when they meet one. And they know exactly how to act friendly, helpful and accommodating just so you know you can trust them implicitly. 

As usual, their apps are always the best at doing what you want them to do. Their support services are exemplary and they respond to you immediately. That’s the impression you get so long as they can win you over. Of course, today, the power of Facebook is so synonymous that it doesn’t even need to do that anymore. If you want to ‘exist,’ you sign up without question.

-         Nefarious and violent. Despite their names, movements for social change aren’t what they say there are. They consider themselves vanguards of truth, peace and love but they carry dangerous weapons, they hide their faces (identities) and they are intolerant, riotous, violent and destructive. They destroy public and private property and they neither own up nor compensate for the damages. They defecate in public places and they use their human wastes as ‘weapons’ in any demonstration against pro-Trump and other conservative groups.

The fact is many online social media organisations support these movements. On the other hand, Facebook and YouTube have threatened and suspended accounts of those who voice opposition against such movements. Although the movie does not get into the political game, the very notion that Eamon wants The Circle to get involved in the voting process raises this question with great concern.

What this means to you: This is the ultimate hypocrisy of it all. Once the youth decides to go all out, you see their true colours emerging. Gone are all the falsified sentiments of peace, compassion and understanding. In their place are civil unrest, violence, destruction and threats. There is nothing they’re going to hide once they get the upper hand.

You will see that when it comes to going against an elected government, these movements will bring together every conceivable socially anarchistic element including Muslim terrorist activists, abortionists, feminists, anarchists, fascists and of course progressivists, leftists, communists and socialists. How so many of these disparate elements will work together is immaterial – all of them view the elected government with the same hatred. 

-        Elitism concealed. Despite what everyone is told, not all in the movement are the equal of one another. There are the minions and there are the elitists. The minions do the work. They might even get sacrificed for their efforts. But the elitists stay above the trouble. They tell the minions what to do but they won’t do what they’re expected to do. They are above everyone else and they neither share their standards nor live by their expectations. Socialism operates in exactly the same manner and the movie demonstrates this with the founders Eamon and Tom who obviously do not practise what they preach.

What this means to you: I used to work for a private international school that is run by a family of father, mother and two sons. Together they run a mini dynasty comprising four campuses in and around Malaysia. One day, a parent found the chairman of the school (the father) having left his car at a spot not meant for parking. 

Summarily, he chided him for being a poor example to the students. You can’t help but agree with that sentiment. A chairman with the right character would’ve apologised, owned up to the mistake and make amends and even hail the parent for being correct but not him.

Instead, he went out of his way to get his son removed from the international school and barred from readmission. It was only after cooler heads prevailed that he was forced to back down from his scandalous behaviour. Not long after all of this nonsense, I tendered my resignation. If this isn’t an example of how elitists work to a different set of rules from the others, I don’t know what is.

-         Powerful and well-funded. All these movements are heavily funded and controlled from the top where the powerful anonymous elite sit. Perched up there, they wield influence and use their deep pockets to throw money to destroy society. One such name to remember here is George Soros but there are, of course, others (such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos who also owns Washington Post), except in his case, he stands out more than everyone else.

George Soros with Hillary Clinton - left-wing elitists of the same feather flock together (Image source: Politico)

People like Soros hold great powers but unfortunately they do not use them for the betterment of society. Unfortunately, the movie does not show this aspect but I’m sure that with Eamon’s celebrity-like influence, he’d be well connected not to mention that, The Circle itself could be rich enough to fund things on their own.

What this means to you: As they say, money makes the world go round. Without the massive funding, most if not all these movements would have succumbed or foundered before they even got to first base. But it isn’t just these movements in America that are problematic. 

Much of the world is suffering from how money is pumped from the outside to destabilise essentially Third-World countries. Much closer to home, corrupt political elitists not just abuse their privileges but steal from public coffers but because they are protected by their more powerful cronies, they get away with their crimes. At least that’s what they think.

-         Useful idiots. At the centre of the socialist agenda is your involvement. To be honest, they don’t actually need you but they want you. To them, all of you are ‘useful idiots,’ a term first coined by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), founder of the Russian Communist Party to describe Western businessmen who naïvely promoted their cause without even realising it (sounds like today’s youth anyway). Eventually it became a term for anyone who is easily conned by similar socialist movements. Life as a ‘useful idiot’ can be precarious – once you’re past your usefulness, they’d destroy you or at least get rid of you.

Are Saul Alinsky's eight rules still in play? Ask any useful idiot (Image source: patinthehat00.wordpress.com) 

To the real socialists in power pulling the strings from above, the category of ‘useful idiots’ can be quite a motley crew comprising feminists and abortionists, Muslim and pro-Muslim activists, gun control and marijuana lobbyists, (liberal) gays, lesbians and transgenders, BLM activists and black convicts, young liberals and progressivists, existentialists, members of the Antifa, atheists and agnostics, the politically correct and anyone who is anti-conservative, anti-democracy and/or anti-Christianity.

Gina (Smith Cho) and Matt (Amir Talai) portrays the epitomised useful idiots (Image source: IMDB)

In the movie, the ‘useful idiots’ are the young liberals that populate The Circle’s campus and workplaces. They do the work and carry out the agenda of the two founders. As the character Ty Lafitte said to Mae, the app he developed has been deliberately deformed by Eamon to do the things he opposed but no one else is even aware of it. Even if they were, they probably wouldn’t believe someone like Ty.

What this means to you: Gigantic online social media organisations like Facebook knows that it depends on its subscribers to sustain its success but it also manipulates them through the way their apps work and the information it collects. 

The problem with this is that many people are simply not seeing it. Just as there are many in America who aren’t willing to work but prefer free handouts, there are just as many of them in Malaysia also. In both cases, they demand their governments to give them everything on the platter – food stamps, education, housing, healthcare and even cell phones.

In other words, they want to enjoy the privilege of entitlement…without working for them. Over time, people get used to entitlements and they also become accustomed to not working. A nation of people that is dependent on government is the model that socialism and communism thrives on. 

This is where government can federalise and centralise everything. They can then control the people, treat them like minions. Make them work, pay them nothing. Bait them with handouts but buy their soul on the cheap and trodden on them.

Just as socialist governments manipulate their people (of late, think of North Korea), huge and powerful online social media giants will likely do the same that is, if they haven’t done so. Once they lure the subscribers, they will slowly reel them in. And it’s not just Facebook and YouTube. China has many emerging Internet-based companies doing the same as well.

-         World dominance. Without a doubt, every IT company dreams of world dominance. The only difference is in the way they each do it. In the case of Facebook and YouTube, it’s strongarming their subscribers to comply with their policies. If you fall out of line by posting content that do not fall within their terms of acceptance, you’d be warned. Do it often enough and they will suspend or remove your account. And it’s easy to fall out of favour with them – try a political flavour they don’t agree with and watch what happens.

(L-R) Max Baucus, U.S. Ambassador to China, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook at the 8th US-China Internet Industry Forum at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington on Sept 23 2015 (Image source: GeekWire)

All corporate IT giants have enormous outreach. They use powerful resources to reshape the world as they see it. They don’t just dabble in products and services. In America, many of them lobby for political favours, almost unanimously siding the liberal agenda. It was eight years of political romance with Obama. 

Now that there is a Republican in the White House who is the antithesis of his predecessor, IT giants have gone to bat for anyone from the Democratic Party, pumping in whatever resources it takes to threaten and finally unseat the Trump presidency. It is all happening as I write this.

In the movie, the resources that are at the disposal of The Circle are frightening. The possibilities in terms of what they can really do in any part of the world isn’t just staggering but the reality isn’t too far away either. 

With SeeChange, they can become the world’s most powerful backbencher and kingmaker and then with SoulSearch, they can play the omniscient and omnipresent global cop catching criminals in all four corners of the world. The Circle teaches us never ever to stake everything in a single organisation thus allowing it capabilities that will be potentially destructive.

What this means to you: Look at the banking industry in Malaysia. From more than a dozen different local banks to choose from, the government forced mergers to take place over the last two decades resulting in less than six banking giants. While the government cited better economies of scale, the people were lamenting a loss of choices and competition. With less to choose from, it was obvious that the quality of customer service, diversity of product and service offerings as well as competitive rates would all suffer.

But that’s Malaysia. What about the online social media industry in America? How did something like Facebook get to become so big in such a short space of time? Of course, there was pent-up demand for connectivity throughout the world. 

After email became such a success, people were expecting even greater spontaneity but also a more dynamic level of engagement, which eventually led to the rise of online social media networking of which Facebook took the most advantage of. 

On the surface, this was a case of good business but there is so much more. Even in the face of scathing criticisms against the way Facebook was lax about security, the company just kept growing as people around the globe (with the exception of ten countries*) signed up in droves.

Clearly Facebook was getting bigger but also more influential and powerful. In fact, it had become not just an IT company but one with enormous power to talk on equal terms with world leaders. When that happened, subscribers would join up without thinking. To them, Facebook was as ubiquitous as having sliced bread. No due diligence necessary. Not need to check and verify. No need to read the in-between lines. 

Instead, hundreds of millions of users dive into Facebook and willingly upload images and messages without even stopping to wonder who is in possession of their intellectual property. Very few ever asked what Facebook would gain from storing their users’ wealth of personal information. Even fewer think there’s anything sinister about the whole set-up.

If you think of Facebook as a nation, they are even more populous than China. At 1.86 billion subscribers, they have 460 million more, which is roughly the combination of America and Russia’s population together. With that scale, its leader Mark Zuckerberg has tremendous cachet and political inertia. He may be an IT company chief but he is increasingly seeing himself as a world leader. Little surprise then that many have speculated that he will run for presidency on a Democrat ticket in 2020.

Just a day ago, an article from Alex Thompson of VICE News said Zuckerberg’s political ambitions now extend to a spending war chest worth USD45 million, which he will invest in political causes that he believes in. And that’s only for the first ten months of this year. You and I know what or who these political causes will clearly benefit.

All of that shouldn’t be a big shock. After all, Zuckerberg has been courting China for many years despite the constant Chinese rebuff. The extent to which he went to in trying to win over the Chinese government reveals not just his global aspirations but his greed. For one, he married a Chinese. Then he learned to speak the language. 

After that, he went jogging, stupidly braving the smog that Beijing is infamous for before he joined a high-profile Chinese university board. He even went as far as to speak to high-ranking Chinese officials with sweetened deals. But nothing beats his act of desperation when he even asked the Chinese president to offer a Chinese name for his child. Not his wife. Not his wife’s family but a non-family stranger.

And still China continues to rebuff Facebook. Inherently then, there must be something to learn here. What do they know about Facebook that all of us don’t seem to care about? If China allows foreign carmakers access to their local markets, why not Facebook? Why don’t they allow Facebook to compete against their own version called Weibo? What do they have to lose? 

Obviously it’s not just about social media networking. It’s very specifically about Facebook and Zuckerberg. There is something about Zuckerberg’s hidden aims that China is wary of. And we could learn from this.

* They include China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, Mauritius, Pakistan and Vietnam

-         Conservative values. Although this article isn’t the best place to talk in any great detail about conservative values, all the same, we can reflect on how they’re unpopular with so many big corporate giants who are only too keen to shirk them off. It appears many leading companies from different industries lean more towards liberal values. They support same-sex marriage and transgenderism. They don’t seem to have anything to say in denouncing the removal and defacing of historical statues that are supposedly linked to slavery.

Many of them contribute significant funds to Planned Parenthood in their quest to perform even more abortions not just in America but in other parts of the world where they operate. They are also not averse to unchecked Syrian Muslim immigrants and of course, they support the Dreamers and the notorious DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). 

And with this, they show no qualms that such massive immigration can add undue burden to public welfare services as well as pose threats to the employability of local Americans. Many large companies welcome Islamism but persecute any display of the Christian cross and any voluntary praying individually or in groups in public.

At USD535 million, Solyndra received more funding stimulus than 35 states received for highways, roads and bridges (Image source: Washington Post)

Many large companies look to government for shady funding agreements. With USD535 million in lost federal guarantees, the Solyndra Scandal rings all the wrong bells for those who enjoy large government footprints and huge handouts but that’s not all. 

Following its catastrophic failure – that is still under investigation – there are still more to follow through since Obama launched a massive USD80 billion clean-technology programme designed to destroy traditional energy industry in America. 

Despite Tesla's scandalous AutoPilot feature proving fatal numerous times, the Feds find no defects and decline to demand a recall (Image source: The New York Times)

This of course leads us to Tesla, the electric car company that has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons (find out more about their AutoPilot disaster by clicking here and here). Its founder Elon Musk has been busy building a multi-billion-dollar fortune running the company that has been funded by Obama’s administration to the tune of USD4.9 billion and despite (hollow) claims of success, one must wonder why the American taxpayers are still subsidising it.

War on Christmas courtesy of A.C.L.U. (Image source: Me.me)

Where Christianity is concerned, even schools, colleges and universities are battered to a pulp with the bastion of the aggressive left, the A.C.L.U. (American Civil Liberties Union), taking the lead in persecution with a heavy hand. 

And in the end, all of academia are cowered into submission, giving up the crosses in their emblems, insignias and crests, stopping their students from praying, banishing anyone from using their facilities to hold prayer groups, preventing teachers from discussing Jesus or any part of the Gospels and crossing swords with anyone who dare to praise God outwardly. Meanwhile many introduced gender-neutral washrooms that open up a brand new threat to schoolgirls.

In the movie, Mercer knew something about conservative values but his advice to Mae was a little too late. Mae’s parents are probably conservative but there were also naïve and unaware, again, until damage was done. Mae herself is quietly conservative and in her little experiment to immerse in the social media experiment, she learns painfully the consequences.

What this means to you: Personal freedom is hard to envisage for those who live in fear. I’m talking about those who have had lifelong experiences living in socialist or communist countries. Today, that means states like North Korea where nodding off in a meeting can get you executed no less by an anti-aircraft gun. Those who live in freedom, on the other hand, don’t seem to appreciate the millions of lives lost in guaranteeing that today.

To have the government intrude into our lives is a scary proposition but an increasingly real one even in countries that enjoy democracy and personal freedom. When government intrudes, they’re just a few steps away from control. And when they gain more power, people will invariably suffer though the doting elite will likely be left untouched. Given the mandate, a government that undermines its people will practise subjugation.

In a democracy, a government hell bent on forcing socialism upon the population will invariably do a few things. Firstly, they will become outsized. Departments will beget new departments and soon the government will become a province of their own. 

Secondly, they will overspend. To counter a national deficit, they’d simply spend more and before you know it, the debt size is tripled or quadrupled. Thirdly, they will begin to give things away free to the ‘disadvantaged’ on the backs of equitability. 

In turning the country into a gigantic welfare state, people invariably become dependent on government to help. This in turn transforms the population into minions who are subservient to the dictates of a powerful, leery and overreaching government. This is, after all, one of the goals of socialism.

Very large corporations are fiefdoms, subsets of countries in their own right. By that, I am referring to humongous entities like Apple, Facebook, Google (or Alphabet), Intel and Microsoft but don’t forget Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Disney, Planned Parenthood, Target, Costco, Tesla and even the despicable Snopes. 

I’m afraid this list is far longer than you think. All of them read from the same page as any socialist government. And unfortunately, none of them look likely to embrace or retain conservative values.

-         Deception. Nefarious organisations look anything but…nefarious. In fact, many deny they’re even nefarious and that’s how effective their underhanded squeaky clean image works. They are extremely adept at looking good because their prime goal is to sweep you off your feet. Once that’s done and you are in their grip, they will begin to control the way you do things. 

Most people don’t seem to mind one way or the other. Their short-term view is that they enjoy using whatever that these organisations offer them. Online social media being what it is, this attitude works well into their hands. And if it looks like a win-win situation, that’s because it is. Yet the long-term effects are definitely disturbing.

Co-founders Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) and Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) begins to deception process on Mae Holland (Emma Watson) in The Circle (Image source: IMDB) 

Every bit of what the movie shows about The Circle is consistent with all this. Their apps are all Trojan horses that lure user involvement but their hidden agenda are all unsettling and worrying. SeeChange ‘promises’ to hold people accountable. SoulSearch aims to ‘catch’ criminals faster than ever possible. 

Their voter membership scheme offers a ‘one-stop’ convergent platform via True You where they can do everything so conveniently including voting during elections. Yet all of these hide the founders’ scheme of world domination and with that, control over the entire world’s population.

What this means to you: We’re often told never to look a gift horse in the mouth. In other words, we shouldn’t find fault with anything that has been received as a gift or a favour. Yet time and again, wisdom suggests that not doing so is foolhardy. 

Just as we don’t sign up for insurance unless we know what it’s about, why do people throw themselves into online social media without some due diligence? People often – and correctly – tell us that nothing is free in this world. 

And I don’t just mean ‘free’ as in no money required. We need to think of ‘free’ as in what it will cost us – and our reputation and privacy – in the long term. By abandoning our cautiousness, we prove we’re too reckless and probably deserved to be manipulated. Facebook isn’t the only thing we worry about. 

Life is full of scammers and tricksters. Malaysians have their fair share, which is why we keep on hearing how people are stupid enough to lose their entire savings to schemes that are simply too good to be true.

The Orwellian age is coming

Mae is stunned by what she learns from Ty (Image source: IMDB)

Although the movie ‘The Circle’ is not supposed to be faith-based, there are socio-ethical themes in it that prompts us to question some of the same issues that pervade in Christian circles. Since it is not meant as a faith-based movie, you certainly don’t need to be a Christian to understand what these issues are but if you are (a Christian), admittedly, you’re likely to understand them better.

The foremost issue raised in the movie concerns surveillance. Eamon Bailey’s vision certainly encapsulates much of this. From True You the online app to SeeChange the real-time camera to ChildTrack the in-bond chip implant for children and then to SoulSearch the 20-min crowd-wide manhunt app, everything offered by The Circle is surveillance based, meaning that it is a veiled means of watching you say, write, act and behave. It intends to catch you out with whatever secrets you hide from others. 

Whether these secrets are or aren’t personal is immaterial – the mantra at The Circle is that because all secrets produce lies, they must be stopped so that everyone can be transparent and honest with one another. Or at least that’s what they like others to believe.

If surveillance propagated by The Circle is frightening enough, being closely monitored at state-level would be unimaginable but for those who have lived under strict communist regimes – think of former states like Yugoslavia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union and the Soviet-bloc versions of Poland and Hungary – they will not only understand it better but tell you what it’s really like.

Today well after the cessation of the Cold War, surveillance is still here to stay though it may be, in some sense, less obvious. With the exception of communist states like China, North Korea, Cuba etc. where monitoring the population is par for the course, surveillance in modern democracies supposedly serve to protect its citizens and prevent harm from occurring. 

In its deterrent role, therefore, it’s not unusual that crime reduction might have benefitted just as the movie shows with something like the SoulSearch app that the character Mae introduced during a Friday rally.

CCTV camera monitoring in London (Image source: ABC News)

Today, CCTV cameras dominate the London cityscape. All told, one rough estimate puts it at around 422,000. And even so, by the end of 2018, that figure will have risen again. On the whole, the United Kingdom has approximately 1.85 million cameras or about one camera for every fourteen Brits. 

However, the civil rights group Big Brother Watch (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk) contends that a 2002 working paper cites 4.2 million as a more common figure. But London isn’t the only city in the world to do so. At 470,000 and counting, Beijing has even more. In America, Chicago apparently leads with a little more than 17,000 and New York has more than 6,000 installed. In fact, the list of top six cities in the world with CCTV cameras looks like this:

• .      Beijing, 470,000 (figure as at 2010 only)
• .     London, 422,000 (41 percent privately owned)
• .     Chicago, about 17,000 via Homeland Security initiative
• .     Houston, number unpublished but said to rival Chicago
• .     New York, more than 6,000 (mostly private owned)
• .     Chongqing, China, more than 500,000 (as per 2012)

The Tsarnaev brothers caught in CCTV surveillance footage released by the F.B.I. on April 19 after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing (Image source: The Guardian)

With these cameras, London has shown in recent years that it can track down and identify terrorists and therefore, fight crime effectively. For example, to catch the Tsarnaev brothers following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, four types of technologies were successfully deployed of which the F.B.I. used fingerprint scanning and shared the use of robots with the Massachusetts and Boston Police and the U.S. Navy. Massachusetts Police provided thermal imaging while the City of Boston used the more than 500 CCTV cameras at their disposal. The images captured by the cameras proved instrumental.

Yet for all of that, there are concerns that personal freedom is being sacrificed purely for the benefit of an all-powerful Orwellian-style totalitarian state. According to an article featured in the Christian Science Monitor, London’s proliferation of cameras is a worrying reality:

“We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society where we’re watched from control rooms by anonymous people,” Emma Carr of the civil rights group, Big Brother Watch. “The worrying thing is that we don’t actually know how many CCTV cameras there are out there.”

Interestingly, Mark Levine, professor of social psychology at Exeter University whose expertise involves studying the relationship between CCTV cameras and crime says that the U.K. is “quite relaxed with it compared to Americans who are suspicious of big government and interference in their lives.”

But then, “similarly I have colleagues from East Germany who came to London and were shocked by the number of cameras,” he added.

And all that’s just the humble CCTV camera. What The Circle proposes is far more radical because its SeeChange technology makes it more effortless to do the same thing sight unseen. With zero infrastructural spending, the wireless stick-anywhere SeeChange camera, according to the movie, costs no more than a decent pair of jeans. 

This is not as inconceivable as it seems. In fact, this is what IoT – or Internet of Things – has since become a critical component of the collect-and-transmit Internet-based data technology that the Gartner Group forecast to be worth 6.4 billion used worldwide by 2016.

With IoT, a whole gamut of information can be easily and quickly integrated from anywhere because the technology enables networked cameras to think independently and intelligently decide. When these cameras are part of a closely-knitted but transparent network, they can ‘talk’ to one another, alerting one or the next when physical movement of a person or an object is detected, indicating an entry or exit from a given scene. 

With this level of interactive intelligence, the video camera can studiously monitor, analyse and collect data and then take action on whatever information it is provided. The industry calls this Intelligent Video Analytics or Video Content Analysis.

Eamon Bailey holds up the miniscule SeeChange camera (Image source: Mashable)

However way you call it, SeeChange is not fantasy stuff and it’s closer to reality than you think. Consider what Cathrine Ro Heuch wrote about the intelligent video camera:

“An intelligent video camera is connected to a cloud that analyses live video content. Events captured by the camera can instantly lead to desired actions. The ability to take action without a human operator is what makes the camera intelligent. Imagine the video camera capturing a car accident or someone falling on the ground. Instead of manually monitoring the traffic or a public place, the intelligent camera will instantly call emergency central or other necessary assistance thus lower the reaction time from accident to action.”

It doesn’t take too much intelligence to figure out how the intelligent video camera can be misused. In that sense, what the movie shows us about SeeChange should be frightening.

iON showcased their wearable Snapcam in ICAST 2015, two years after Dave Eggers wrote his novel, The Circle (Image source: ICAST)

The idea behind SeeChange, according to Eamon Bailey, is to catch everything that is happening so that lies and deceit will not happen. With the world getting to see everything as is, nobody will be able to hide anymore. Eamon luxuriates in the grandiose vision of overthrowing despots, which presumably would include catching jihadists and all other terrorists. And together with the SoulSearch app, The Circle would ideally be able to remove all hints of crime throughout the world.

If it were a perfect world, this would be the best solution for humanity. But even so, the inevitable question arises – at a loss of privacy, are these ideals worth pursuing? In other words, exactly how much value do we place on our privacy? Or how desirous is our privacy? Some say that if we don’t intend to do crime, none of this would matter but how safe do we really feel in putting all that trust to a single organisation that may end up abusing their authority? 

The movie’s antichrist

Just when the antichrist thinks he has the world in his hands, Jesus arrives for His Second Coming (Image source: Free Bible Studies Online)

In the movie, Eamon tells his audience at the rally, saying, “I believe in the perfectibility of human beings.” And having already been manipulated, Mae added that, “Secrets are lies” to which Eamon reinforced, saying privacy is both ‘selfish’ and ‘stealing.’ Eamon’s character in the movie reveals very subtle antichrist qualities, which then draws us to look at the themes from a Christian viewpoint. 

For those who don’t know, the antichrist is a person who will be the direct opposite of Jesus Christ, who will oppose Him and whom God will destroy at the end of the Last Days. In 1 John 2:18, the apostle John said this:

“Dear children, this is the last hour, and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.” (1 Jn 2:18, ESV)

The interesting aspect of what John says is that not one but “many antichrists have come.” While we cannot refute what is said in Scripture, we can say that ultimately, there will be the antichrist, who has yet to come but will in due time. 

More than anyone else, this is the one person – and nobody says it has to be male either – who will profess his (or her) denial of the Father and the Son and who will not acknowledge Jesus. He (or she) will also reject the idea that Jesus came in the flesh.

In defiance of God, the antichrist will pronounce to the world that it is he (or she) who is the real Messiah and as such, has the authority to seek total domination of the world. But the true self will be revealed and the antichrist will go on to annihilate all Christians and destroy Israel before he (or she) moves to destroy everyone else. 

The mark of the beast and the rise of the antichrist (Image source: Free Bible Studies Online)

As the Book of Revelation reveals, the antichrist will not only be defeated but will be flung into the lake of fire where in eternity, he and others will spend in torment:

“And the beast was captured and with him, the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf of the beast – miracles that deceive all who had accepted the mark of the beast and who worshipped his statue. Both the beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulphur.” (Rev 19:20, NLT)

“Then the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulphur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There, they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” (Rev 20:10, NLT)

And further on,

“But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practise witchcraft, idol worshippers and all liars – their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.” (Rev 21:8, NLT)

The first two verses talk of the ‘beast’ and the ‘false prophet.’ Both are different people but the antichrist is a direct reference to the beast but more of that later. In the third verse, John reveals those who will also be flung into the lake of fire. Being their ‘second death’ means these people had already died the mortal death on Earth but once awaken from their sleep, they will now face the ultimate eternal torment.

Is Eamon Bailey a character befitting an antichrist? (Image source: IMDB)

The eerie parallel between the movie’s Eamon Bailey and the antichrist is uncanny but for Christians, it is apparent. Although the narrative weaves around an unsuspecting online social media setting, closer scrutiny unveils the same exact plan to hoodwink the people and dominate and destroy the world. 

Today, we live in a world that is completely consumed by instant gratification. We want everything now. And without delay. In our discussion, we’re looking at instantaneous communicability and spontaneous interactivity. But it’s a whole lot more than this. We’re also dealing with the acquiring of information often surreptitiously without the knowledge of the person who owns it.

In our world, email is passé. Where it was once hailed a miracle over snail mail, there are now better options such as instant text and video messaging. If WhatsApp is stunning, Twitter is even more so. The unheralded star of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Twitter is so popular and culturally influential that President Trump as well as the Pope and ISIS terrorists use it to reach the masses. 

Yet we don’t realise that even the bad people rely on them to do their bidding. Today, it is online social media that keeps all of us in the loop. Keep off it for just a few days and you’d soon realise how far behind you are and the effort you have to go to just to claw back. 

Your email account will be stuffed with messages that you haven’t read (including spam and scam mail). Your text messaging app will point to many unread messages that require your attention as well. And you might notice missed incoming call requests lining up in your Skype log.

Many reviewers correctly suggest that when we look at the movie’s portrayal of an IT giant – The Circle – we need look no further than an amalgam of several real companies put together, beginning with Facebook but very possibly inclusive of many others. 

A close scrutiny of these online social media giants reveal striking similarities, the very kind that characterise a company like The Circle and draw it uncomfortably close to the prophesied antichrist. The way they operate with and without their cohorts. Their mooted objectives. The way they go about achieving their ends. Their deception and false promises. All of these place these companies – real and imagined – right where the antichrist is.

The mark of the beast shall be on either the right hand or on the forehead (Image source: hellasforce.com)

In Christian eschatology, the number ‘666’ is commonly referred to as the ‘mark of the beast.’ The ‘beast’ here is as we have identified earlier as the antichrist, Christ’s ultimate enemy whom God will destroy in the final episode against Satan. This number is talked about at the close of Revelation 13 where the antichrist and the false prophet are discussed. Here, the apostle John declares:

“Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.” (Rev 13:18, NLT)

Many of us equate this number to the beast. We view it as the identifier. In fact Revelation 13 also talks about the ‘mark of the beast’ such as here:

“He required everyone – small and great, rich and poor, free and slave – to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.” (Rev 13:16-17, NLT)

Popular fare links this number ‘666’ with the so-called mark to the extent that most people believe that both are inseparable, the one and the same. Yet the mark of the beast and 666 may actually be two different things altogether. Read verse 17 carefully. It says that, “no one could buy or sell anything without that mark” and it goes on to define that mark as “either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.” 

In other words, the mark is something people must acquire from the antichrist so that they may do business (buy and sell). The number 666, on the other hand, is associated with the beast (the antichrist, in other words) as this is his number.

The significance of the number 666 is undeniable and in its own way, we see it buried within the movie also. Yet for all its significance, its meaning remains a mystery. Perhaps that’s how John might have wanted to leave it as such, a mystery though he did say that wisdom is required to solve it. By wisdom, he probably meant the way you calculate it (v.18). That alone has led to many attempted identifications of the antichrist throughout world history starting with the murderous Caesar Nero.

The current popular vote for antichrist goes to Barack Obama but there were plenty of others in the past as well (Image source: Divine Revelations)

In recent times, the list of antichrists includes the following: Adolf Hitler, Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger, Napoleon Bonaparte, Juan Carlos I of Spain, Bill Gates, Prince William and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Of late, the list has also added Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Alexis Tsipras, Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Jared Kushner, Javier Solana, Justin Trudeau, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Zoltan Istvan.

Some are convinced that any Pope or American President is an antichrist. Another suggest that the character Nicolae Jetty Carpathia in Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins’ Left Behind book series epitomises the real antichrist; that he will be the archetypal charismatic European political leader who goes on to head a global organisation be it the European Union or the United Nations. Even Danny DeVito and Misha Collins have come in for mention.

Considering the evilness, some in the list are understandable. Some are nothing but wild inferences with little basis other than political hatred. Some others are a result of biblical conjecture; a case of adding two and two together and finding matching Scripture verses. 

But there are also those that apply a numerological system in order to get a person’s name to add up to… 666. Called Gematria, this is a Greek-inspired numerological system that correlates Hebrew alphabets and numbers that is developed by Kabbalah practitioners for the purpose of interpreting biblical texts. As amazing as that may seem, getting anyone’s name to add up to 666 isn’t mathematically impossible.

So there we have it. 666, the identity of the beast but even so, how does such a number get to be associated with the antichrist. We don’t and won’t ever know but that’s not the point of Revelation 13:18. But it might be interesting to see how some numbers bear certain symbolisms though one should not look too deeply into it. For example, Scripture often refers to 40 as a number to represent trials and there’re more than enough examples in the Bible to show that.

And then there is the number 7, which is symbolically significant as a reference to God and His perfection. This perfection is, of course, in relation to His creation week. If 7 is expressed as such, then 6 being one less, reminds us of the sixth day of Creation in which God created man. 

It is hence that this is then the number of Man but because man consistently fall short of his Creator, it is also an implication of his imperfection. 6 isn’t 7 and it will never be just as the beast (or the antichrist) strives to be God but he will never be. He will even go as far as to claim divinity but again, he is not God. The antichrist will forever fall short and with his ‘trinity’ of 6’s, he will ultimately fail in the destruction of man because God will see to it.

As for the number 6, many consider it the number of Man or the imperfection in man’s work as in man being created on the sixth day and then consistently falling short of God. It is, in many ways, an implication of man’s existence without God, without Christ.

Note: Many Bible translations provide a note to say that based on ancient Greek manuscripts, the number 666 in the Book of Revelation is actually 616 though for whatever reason, the consensus has remained strongly with the more infamous number. 

RFID and microchip implanting

With an RFID microchip implanted, you can scan your hand to open a security door (Image source: CBA Canada)

But then what does the 666 or the mark of the beast has anything to do with the movie?

Near the midpoint of the movie, Mae was at one of the community get-togethers where she meets up with Sabine, a co-worker who lets her in on a new technology called ChildTrack, a system of protecting children from predation by way of a chip implant in their bones. In her disbelief, she laughs but her co-worker tells her as a matter of fact that it has reduced kidnapping, rape and murder by as much as 99 percent. 

In Egger’s original novel (of the same name), microchips were implanted in the children’s wrists by the Danish government so that parents know their whereabouts at all times. But because these implants could easily by cut out from the under the skin, the company resolved to implant it in the bone instead.

All of that is real and definitely a doable technology. Today, biocompatible microchip implants utilising RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) are routine procedures. 

The first we heard of this was in 1998 when British professor of cybernetics Kevin Warwick had an RFID chip implanted in his arm. Six years later in 2004, the ‘Baja Beach Clubs’ in Barcelona and Rotterdam offered chip implants for their VIP customers so that they could use it to pay for services.

Dr Mark Gasson volunteers for RFID chip implant (Image source: Wikipedia) 

In the same year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave their approval to the use of RFID microchips as human implants. In 2009, British scientist Mark Gasson surgically implanted an RFID chip encased in an advanced glass capsule into his left hand and then showed how a computer virus could wirelessly affect it and then from there, spread to other systems.

All of these medical implant technologies have raised concerns of the approaching evidence of Revelation 13’s mark of the beast. Though the specific technology is not the mark of the beast per se, its advent spells the beginning of what we believe will truly emerge eventually. This is, in the view of many, the infancy stages we’re seeing. While these implants we read of are medical in nature, anything that resembles the mark of the beast will be given to those who worship the antichrist. 

In other words, any mark of the beast that resembles a microchip implant will be something we will see as an identification during the End Times that the antichrist demands so that the business of buying and selling may be possible by those who worship him instead of God Himself (Rev 13:17, NLT).

Tony Danna, VP for international development for Three Square Market, a US company, receives a microchip implant in his left hand at his own headquarters (Image source: AP Photos)

Just three months ago, CBN reported that the first wave of American workers are to be microchip implanted and the company that is carrying out the procedure, Three Square Market a software developer, says it’s the future and cited convenience as the reason for the move. The chip will be implanted in the employees’ hands between the thumb and the forefinger so that they may purchase items, log on to computers, open doors etc.

“It’s the next thing that’s inevitably gonna happen and we want to be a part of it,” its CEO Todd Westby said.

“Eventually, this technology will become standardised allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc.,” he added.

Another executive from the company said, “We see this as another payment and identification option that not only can be used in our markets but our other self-checkout and self-service applications that we are now deploying, which include convenience stores and fitness centres.”

But a pastor from Hope Christian Fellowship Church in Iowa is having none of that.

“I take microchipping as a form of the mark,” Pastor Dave Doyle said, referring to the ‘mark of the beast’ in Revelation 13.

“There’s many pieces of the mark and then again, all these pieces of the mark is designed to control,” he added.

Pastor Doyle echoes the same Christian concerns all over the world, saying that such technologies are bound to be used by governments to nullify people’s freedom and rights. It’s just a matter of time.

“It will eventually become something that’s mandatory, and for those who refuse it, you will have to deal with the authorities who don’t appreciate your opinions.”

A baby born with barcode?? (Image source: Freaking News)

The opposition isn’t only coming from Christians. The secular view shows equal concern but perhaps for slightly different reasons but reasons that we can understand and agree with. According to the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Professor Jeremy Hajek, microchip implanting has serious legal implications.

“So you’re opening up a much larger privacy issue of, well, who owns where you go? Who owns what you do? And who owns what you buy? Are you entitled to that privacy? Or does that privacy not really exist?” he asks.

“Do you own that data? Or does the company own that data? And I think the legal system needs to catch up a little bit to this because these are new questions that the current laws on hand may not quite accurately cover,” he added.

The irony of Hajek’s questions is that he could have raised them against every online social media giant including Facebook. But then of course, the Bible doesn’t give us any specific idea as to the physical form that the mark of the beast would be. Other than a microchip implant, there are other possibilities mentioned such as tattooed barcode, ID card or something far simpler.

The millennials think that biometric tattoos that go beep and flash are cool (Image source: Now the End Begins)

In fact, your guess is as good as mine. Having said all of that, the movie’s brief focus on the microchip implant simply offers us the impetus to think about how far along the way we are towards the End Times. And it’s not just the ChildTrack idea but a wider application of the implant that is now occurring in many parts of the world. All of them may not be the actual mark of the beast but the day will come when surely we will know which one of the many is the one.

Just to recap for now, here’s the ending part to Revelation 13:

“Then I saw another beast come up out of the earth. He had two horns like those of a lamb but he spoke with the voice of a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast. And he required all the earth and its people to worship the first beast whose fatal wound had been healed. He did astounding miracles, even making fire flash down to earth from the sky while everyone was watching.

“And with all the miracles he was allowed to perform on behalf of the first beast, he deceived all the people who belong to this world. He ordered the people to make a great statue of the first beast who was fatally wounded and then came back to life. He was then permitted to give life to this statue so that it could speak. Then the statue of the beast commanded that anyone refusing to worship it must die. He required everyone – small and great, rich and poor, free and slave – to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead.

“And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name. Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.” (Rev 13:11-18, NLT)

Dangerous liberal forces

Emma Watson as Mae Holland in The Circle (Image source: IMDB)

Make no mistake about it. The antichrist is coming. And he will mislead the world. He will claim to be the real Messiah and if you can’t tell the false from the real (Messiah), you’d in serious trouble especially when you believe his proclamation of doing good for mankind and having answers to all our problems. By the time he tells you that he can bring out the best in Man through a new structure that brings everyone together, you would have completely sold your soul.

Whether the mark of the beast is eventually going to be microchip implants or not isn’t material. The movie may hit or miss on this point but the overall concern that it raises remains very legitimate. The parallels we should now be able to draw between characters of Eamon Bailey’s ilk and the antichrist are not moot points. 

They are serious and they are not far-fetched no matter what anyone tells you. Online social media might be the best thing since sliced bread to millions of users but if you get to wake up from this stupor and start thinking, you might just see the sinister aspect and save yourself.

Indeed, Man has long since turned their backs on God and that’s where the trouble began. Without understanding let alone read the Bible, there is precious nothing to educate you concerning the lethal promises of the antichrist. You wouldn’t know what the mark of the beast is. You would probably laugh at the idea of the antichrist. You might just end up thinking we’re the ones who are ignorant.

The mark of the beast is so subtle. Godless people can only see the commercial benefits. They are blind to anything else that it might represent. But evangelical Christians will be the ones who will refuse this mark. Pastor Doyle said he’d inform his congregation never to get chipped.

“If I’m told I need to go against the Word of God, I would prefer to go to jail first. And Christians need to have that mindset because that’s what we’re going to go against,” he said.

In spite of Christians’ opposition and resistance towards microchip implanting or whatever form the mark of the beast takes, the antichrist is on course to identify, find and destroy all of us, God’s people. And if The Circle’s SoulSearch app is as potent as the movie makes it out to be, then there’s very little to help us hide from the antichrist.

And then with surveillance network technologies gradually reaching global and achieving seamlessness, there’s really nothing standing in his way. Suddenly the whole idea of connecting everything together isn’t as exciting as the frightening possibilities and outcomes it portends especially when the very thing that is at stake are our personal information.

Tom Hanks as Eamon Bailey in The Circle (Image source: IMDB)

Couple all of that to Eamon Bailey’s announcement that every state in America would require their citizens to cast their votes using their Circle accounts. Like virtually everything else with online social media, this is exciting on the surface but if you dig a little deeper, you’d realise that the implications are deeply ominous if not horrifying. But then, how real is this? Will such a collusion take place in reality? Will the people oppose it?

Don’t forget that most of these IT giants are very well connected, politically speaking. They are themselves very strong lobbyists and they have powerful friends in powerful places although their partisan views are almost exclusively to the left of the pond. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg face to face with Chinese President Xi as China's 'Internet czar' Lu Wei (far left) looks on (Image source: GeekWire)

Besides, Zuckerberg himself has begun to announce his political activities, which in the future may or may not include a presidential run in 2020. That dovetails perfectly into a strategic motive, which is his much-prized inroad into the mainland Chinese market. With almost 1.5 billion people to tap, Facebook will be the most powerful multinational community anywhere in the world and it will have the means to disrupt any country’s political complexion at will.

In the movie, it was Mae who fuelled the idea of coalescing The Circle’s ambitions with vote-casting across as many states as possible. She reasoned that if we can make toilet breaks in the bathroom and not in public mandatory, there is no reason not to make voting compulsory for people of voting age as it is in some countries. To tie all of this up, Mae envisions the unifying of a single platform from which everything could happen including voting.

That includes the insistence that every individual voter must possess a Circle account before he can vote. This whole idea is so dangerous and yet very doable. If you have the right resources to keep lobbying the Congress, it will eventually happen. It’s this dogged determination that enable the liberal agenda – think of same-sex marriage, abortion, transgenderism, euthanasia etc. – to succeed.

Ultimately, the liberal agenda is global totalitarianism, which is the western version of the Islamic caliphate. There’s not much difference between the two except that the former is godless and the latter is demonic. With the European Union (EU) paving the way, the rest of the world is just a few steps behind. Once the EU falls, we’ll all have to see how the Domino Effect take place. 

EU's Angela Merkel is wary of a new America by Trump (Image source: The Independent)

In all of the liberal political ambitions, perhaps the EU is one of its treasured jewels in the crown. It sets stunning examples of how nations lose not just their currency but more alarmingly, their sovereignty to a collectivistic centralised government. Here is where consolidated and centralised EU laws inevitably trump individual national laws.

What the socialists are pursuing is to project the same to the rest of the world but principally, the first prized target is invariably America. Once the dismantling occurs in America, the antichrist will be able to control supply and distribution of food, energy, healthcare and all commodities, products and services. 

This will be a brand new power game, a one-and-all monopoly to end all monopolies. He will then declare all this in the (false) name of peace and prosperity. And everyone will believe him. That is why President Trump is such a hated political leader in the EU and just about anywhere else in the world. With him in the way, the antichrist has a formidable roadblock that will take far more time and effort to remove.

With the way the world is regressing towards the End Days, looking back at the movie might offer us a clearer opportunity to put Eamon’s vision and dreams into perspective. A person of such power and influence isn’t just made for movies; they are in great supply in the business world and they tread the corridors of power, making decisions that progressively weaken our resolve while strengthening their own hand.

Is Eamon Bailey the warning we need to reassess online social media? (Image source: IMDB)

Slowly but surely, the stranglehold on conservative values will begin to asphyxiate us. The likes of Eamon and his ambitious plans will begin to bear fruit once the world’s leading online social media giants start to unfold their grand plans. We’re so used to looking only at the elephant in the room, Facebook, but we must constantly remind ourselves that there are many others out there who will one day, work together and unify their power to bring Christians into submission.

Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that though they are all supposedly outstanding business leaders with the world at their feet, yet many haven’t a clue that they’re disposable pawns of the antichrist in the larger scheme of things. With the promise of a fiery lake in their future, that’s not something to scoff about.

THE CIRCLE (2017)

Based on the novel of the same name by Dave Eggers

Starring Emma Watson (‘Mae Holland’), Tom Hanks (‘Eamon Bailey’), John Boyega (‘Ty Laffite’), Karen Gillan (‘Annie Allerton’), Ellar Coltrane (‘Mercer Madeiros’), Patton Oswalt (‘Tom Stenton’), Bill Paxton (‘Vinnie Holland’), Glenne Headly (‘Bonnie Holland’)

Produced by Anthony Bregman, Gary Goetzman and James Ponsoldt and distributed by STX Entertainment

Directed by James Ponsoldt

Screenplay by James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers

Photography by Matthew Libatique

For more information, go to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4287320/

Further reading resources

Benware, Paul N. (May 2006) Understanding End Times Prophecy: A Comprehensive Approach (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-End-Times-Prophecy-Comprehensive/dp/0802490794

Carter, Joe (Nov 2012) The 7 Most Popular Contenders for the Title ‘Antichrist’ (The Gospel Coalition). Accessible at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-7-most-popular-contenders-for-the-antichrist

Connor, Steve (Aug 1998) Professor Has World’s First Silicon Chip Implant (London, UK: Independent). Accessible at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/professor-has-worlds-first-silicon-chip-implant-1174101.html

Creekmore, Lauren (Jul 2017) Pastor: Microchipping Humans is Straight Out of Revelation (Virginia Beach, VA: Christian Broadcast Network). Accessible at http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/july/pastor-microchipping-humans-is-straight-out-of-revelation

Evans, Ian (Feb 2012) Report: London No Safer for All Its CCTV Cameras (Boston, MA: The Christian Science Monitor). Accessible at https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/0222/Report-London-no-safer-for-all-its-CCTV-cameras

Gary (Feb 2015) Current Antichris Candidates (Unsealed Christian News). Accessible at http://www.unsealed.org/2015/02/know-your-candidates.html

Gasson, Dr Mark N. (June 2010) Human Enhancement: Could You Become Infected with a Computer Virus? (Wollongong, Australia: 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society p.61). Accessible and downloadable at http://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/~sis04mng/research/GASSON_ISTAS2010.pdf. Also available at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5514651/?reload=true 

Greene, Thomas C. (Oct 2004) Feds Approve Human RFID Implants (London, UK: The Register). Accessible at https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/14/human_rfid_implants/

Heuch, Cathrine Ro (Jul 2016) Cameras and IoT: Going from Smart to Intelligent (San Francisco, CA: Readwrite). Accessible at http://readwrite.com/2016/07/22/cameras-smart-intelligent-dt2/

Kimutai, Gilbert (Apr 2017) The Most Spied Upon Cities in the World (St Laurent, Quebec: Worldatlas). Accessible at http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-spied-on-cities-in-the-world.html

Morton, Simon (Sept 2004) Barcelona Clubbers Get Chipped (London, UK: BBC News). Accessible at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm

Rajput, Atul (Feb 2016) Smart CCTV and the Internet of Things: 2016 Trends and Predictions (London, UK: IFSEC Global). Accessible at https://www.ifsecglobal.com/smart-cctv-and-the-internet-of-things-2016-trends-and-predications/

Ratzabi, Hila (nd) What is Gematria? Hebrew Numerology and the Secrets of the Torah (New York, NY: My Jewish Learning). Accessible at https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/gematria/

Stroud, Matt (Apr 2013) They’re Watching: Why City-Wide Surveillance Failed to Stop the Boston Bombing (Manhattan, NYC: The Verge). Accessible at https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/24/4252598/theyre-watching-why-city-wide-surveillance-still-failed-to-stop-the-boston-bombing

Thompson, Alex and Kulwin, Noah (Oct 2017) Mark Zuckerberg has bigger plans than the White House (New York, NY: VICE News). Accessible at https://news.vice.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-political-spending 

Tormsen, David (Jan 2016) 10 Individuals Surprisingly Identified as the Antichrist (ListVerse). Accessible at https://listverse.com/2016/01/06/10-individuals-surprisingly-identified-as-the-antichrist/

Towns, Elmer L. (June 2003) Bible Answers for Almost All Your Questions (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson). Available at https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Answers-Almost-Your-Questions/dp/0785263241

Unknown (May 2011) Top 5 Cities with the Largest Surveillance Camera Networks (Chicago, IL: Vintech Systems). Accessible at http://vintechnology.com/2011/05/04/top-5-cities-with-the-largest-surveillance-camera-networks/

Wise, Talia (Jul 2014) Chipping Employees: Wisconsin Company is First in US to Give it a God (Virginia Beach, VA: Christian Broadcast Network). Accessible at http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/july/chipping-employees-wisconsin-company-is-first-in-us-to-give-it-a-go

Witt, Sam (Jan 1999) Is Human Chip Implant Wave of the Future? (Atlanta, GA: CNN Sci-Tech). Accessible at http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9901/14/chipman.idg/