Tomorrowland

March Madness #3

I just watched Tomorrowland and I started to think about how David (the villain of the movie) explained why he was putting the idea of the world ending into peoples heads. This is what he said.

“Let’s imagine. If you glimpsed the future and were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to…who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck. The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. Now, what if…what if there was a way of skipping the middleman, putting the critical news directly into everyone’s heads? The probability of widespread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it, to scare people straight. 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 can be enjoyed as video games, as TV shows, books, movies. The entire world wholeheartedly 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 coal mine 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 terrible future and you resign yourselves to it, for one reason: because that future doesn’t ask anything of you today. So, yes, you saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic, but you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up. That’s not the Monitor’s fault. It’s yours.”

And when I heard that I sort of agreed with him. There is the possibility of a better future, but we don’t make it a reality because it doesn’t ask anything of us. We always think about how the future will be better and how cool it’ll be, but we don’t do anything to try and make it a reality. Some people take matters into their own hands, but a couple thousand people can’t save a planet from millions of others. why do we give up? all these terrible things are happening and we humans do nothing about them. We just accept that the ice caps will melt, we just accept that some species that are crucial to the environment will become extinct because of poaching and deforestation, and we do nothing about it when we could solve these problems. Why don’t we solve these problems?

in English class, for a journal prompt. We were asked if we wanted to see how we died and how we turned out in the future, and why we chose yes or no. I chose yes, because if I saw how I died and what I ended up being I could change that. and make it the future that I wanted. But other people in the class said no, because then they would always feel scared knowing that they’ll die at this time and date and they can’t do anything to stop it. But they could stop it, if they didn’t accept that fate they could change their future. no one can tell you how your story ends, you decide it, and you can change the world for the better if you just believe. That’s how Casey (the hero of the movie) saw the world, and I think we all need to think just a little bit like her.