Just saw the Disney movie ‘Tomorrowland’. The following passage is quite interesting and worth looking at:
“Let’s imagine… if you’d glimpse the future, you are frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You’d go to who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? With data? With Facts? Good luck. The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it, was to show it. To scare people straight, because what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate éclair. They didn’t fear their demise, they repackaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games as TV-shows, books, movies, the entire world whole-heartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.
Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation – explain that one. Bees and butterflies start to disappear the glaciers melt, algae blooms all around you, the coalmine canaries are dropping dead and you won’t take the hint.
In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this so terrible future, you resign yourselves to it for one reason: Because that future doesn’t ask anything of you today.
So, yes, we saw the iceberg, we warned the Titanic, but you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up. And that’s not the monitor’s fault – that’s yours.”
It still puzzles me why the character speaking these words was portrayed as the villain – wasn’t he right on the money? Isn’t that exactly what is happening today? Some say the movie is about imagination, about feeding positive thoughts rather than negative thoughts – but it’s not really. The movie has one simple message: Are we giving up when seeing the world we’ve created with all its unintended ‘ooopsy’ consequences – or are we going to realize that if we want a different future, we have to actually create it. Positive thoughts or feelings won’t do. It is actions that are needed, our behavior that needs to change, our demands that need to change – from destruction to construction.
So ask yourself: what do I DO each day to create a different world?
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