One of our most witty and savvy threaders, Dave in Georgia, gently criticizes my last message to you by observing that nobody actually comes out for rage and despair.

Well, good point, to a point. We “public intellectuals” have to work hard to keep from patting ourselves on the back for “courageously” taking stands that nobody in his or her right mind would disagree with. Like coming out against slavery or racism or for truth or love or beauty. Not so long ago it would have been courageous for a professor in the South to come out for same-sex marriage. But, of course, not now. To say something courageous in public — in class, on TV, on a blog someone actually reads — would be knowing that you’re going to provoke scary rage from your audience by genuinely taking your readers or listeners outside their complacent comfort zones.

No, I’m not going to say something that outrageous right now. After all, as I explained before, we live in very touchy times, because all that rage is bottled up just beneath the surface.

But there is quite a respectable — if not uncontroversial — case for rage given by that great poet Dylan Thomas: ”Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I was reminded of that poem by hearing those words more than once in Interstellar. There, from one point of view, rage is an evolutionary survival mechanism that causes each of us to rebel against our natural destiny.

One point the movie makes is that our species properly uses technology to rebel against nature’s randomly but relentlessly aiming at both personal and species extinction. The problem, of course, is that rage, as the poet describes it, is only existential or personal. My bleepin’ light is dying! That’s the real issue here.

That personal rage, Peter Thiel explains, provokes us to transform nature into a secure environment for me. It’s the rage that’s at the foundation of the modern progress toward rational control. And so far it seems to be working for us, he wants us to believe. And it will continue to work if we focus our hope on a definite techno-plan.

Is it really possible to transform the personal concern of self-conscious animals into rage to save the species? Even the movie suggests maybe not. The species is saved, so to speak, by intimate love. Love is reserved for those you really know, beginning with your kids. The movie, of course, is more relational than Thielism. It pushes the indispensability of ”belonging,” which is more in accord with what Mr. Darwin actually says than excessively privileging autonomy or self-sufficiency.

Raging at the dying of the species is not impossible, but it will never become common. That’s why the insight that the point of science is to save the species — not particular persons around right now — has to remain secret or esoteric in the movie. From a certain view, the film’s concluding baloney about saving particular persons (who end up dying later anyway) is a romantic fantasy that allows people to leave the theater without absorbing for themselves the secret insight.

Why does the scientist care about the species? Well, Carl Sagan (who lurks in the text and subtext of Interstellar) explains why. Science has discredited every other form of human devotion, as well as the very idea of personal significance. And the only way to avoid nihilism–the only way to know what to do–is to affirm the indefinite perpetuation of our species as a sacred cause. That means, for one thing, not going down with the planet.

From the poet’s (and the Thielist’s — but not the scientist’s) view, it’s perfectly human to rage against the dying of one’s own light. It’s noble to fight against personal extinction, against total and permanent darkness. And there’s something inhuman in surrendering that spirit of resistance by being gentled by “philosophy is learning how to die” or the hopelessly incoherent hope in salvation by a God so personal that he’s about keeping the light on for me.

The poet’s admonition is not, of course, just for himself, but for us all. Thomas’s poem is addressed to his father, and it’s about living in the invincible personal truth until it is swallowed up by the invincible darknesss of nature. Poetry is both more relational and more realistic than technology, and the truth it defends is often or even usually unrealistically denied by science.

There may not be a case for despair, which is, after all, very whiny. But there is a case for living without hope, which the Epicureans across the ages give. More on that soon.

Does this view of rage contradict the one I expressed before? Not at all, insofar I haven’t yet been outrageous enough to point out my view.