Thrive: What on Earth Will It Take
This documentary has a lot going for it. Its sources are fantastic. Its research is deep. Its message profound.
It also has a few things going for it that will certainly prevent certain individuals from seriously entertaining it:
(1) A Science Fiction Bent. Yes, it talks about aliens. It “goes there.” But it does so with an open mind to all possibilities, rather than the fanaticism we see on, say, Ancient Aliens, which would be entirely inappropriate. Are we so self-centered as a species that we can’t accept an honest discussion about extraterrestrial life? Even the Vatican has released a statement condoning a belief in aliens (no doubt in attempt to update the Catholic Church’s image with a scientific inevitability - their war against science is a losing battle).
(2) Cheesy Production. Its production is certainly challenging at first. The effects and music are an obvious deliberate attempt to add drama. But I think the intentions are pure, and we can be forgiving. I work in a creative industry, and I know from personal experience how a visual concept, in all its metaphorical and symbolic glory, can fall flat once executed. To this film’s credit, though, a sci-fi model does work thematically, when we consider the actual points it makes. After getting over my initial embarrassment (it’s our own embarrassment at watching something bad that gets us, right?), I rather liked it. The visuals are entirely effective.
(3) Idealism. This is the real doozy: The overall message is perhaps too grand for some to conceptualize, because it deals with a basic facet of human nature we have yet to reconcile with: whether we are inherently good or bad.
In attempting to discover what is wrong with the world, this film proposes that, if we can conquer these issues, the world that we will find ourselves in afterward will appear utopian by comparison. This probably looks like bullshit to many. We are taught to reject idealism from an early age - pretty much once our beliefs in Santa and the Easter Bunny are squashed. Darwin tells us that this world is the survival of the fittest, and the extension of that is the conclusion that human nature is inherently not good enough to allow us to coexist peacefully. But we need to remember that, although Darwin proposed a fantastic new model of evolution, his model alone is still not enough to fully explain the origins of man, specifically how our brain has developed. The more bones we unearth from the ashes of the earth, and the deeper we probe our own minds, the more perplexing our developmental history truly is. We aren’t taught these mysteries in grade school. Rather than experiencing Darwin as the theory it is, factional and vulnerable to criticism, it tends to be shoved down our throats as final, prevailing proof that God doesn’t exist and we live in a straight and linear world, one that doesn’t surprise us. And yet, if we actually took the time to research our own world more thoroughly, we would find that this world surprises us again and again, because we know so little about it.
What we do know is this: humans have an immense capacity for positive and negative emotions. We are just as capable of violence as we are love and compassion. Or are we? Because it seems to me like love and compassion are much stronger in most people than their darker sides, and not because of fear for retaliation; it is a pure and natural desire for happiness that creates positive emotions and actions. Whatever love is, it’s VERY real. Philosophers have contemplated whether it evolved as a mechanism of defense in a cruel world - mothers protect children, fathers protect families, extended families or villages protect each other. But this does not explain the compassion we feel for people who are completely unrelated and perhaps continents away from us; nor does it explain our compassion for animals, particularly those who, instinctively, we should fear. (Marilynne Robinson’s Absence of Mind has a great section on this topic) While many cynics try to suggest that without laws and an armed government, the people would crumble into anarchy and chaos, I only have to look around at my friends, neighbors and family to admit: No. We would continue functioning without assaulting, cheating, stealing and generally being bad people, because we are, inherently, “good people,” people who find happiness in human relationships that depend on honesty and goodwill. Conditioning is powerful stuff, but that would imply that all people would be destitute without the conditioning. We see love, compassion and immense cooperation amongst remote populations of people all over the world, many who have had zero contact with the Western world until recently. If they can cooperate and thrive in such primitive conditions, why can’t we? Why are we so selfish despite our many comforts?
We encounter examples of human selfishness on a regular basis - we are taught to believe that, living in Darwin’s world, we can’t escape our primitive need for “survival,” which has become a loose concept applying to anything we think we need, since everything can be boiled down to the basic level reproduction; money, power and all material things are our vain attempts to impress our mates and build our empires. Apparently, we are told, ALL humankind has behaved this way for ALL history. But this is simply not true. Science prefers simple explanations - the simpler the better. But simpler isn’t always true. Let’s analyze human behavior on a smaller scale. If it is in our nature to form a hierarchy, it would occur in all facets of our lives, including our “private” lives. What we find in looking closely at our private lives is a nation-wide movement spreading to REJECT such a hierarchy. What we find are women and homosexuals and interracial couples fighting for their rights to be not just “equal,” but more specifically, equal to the “norm” prescribed by our society. We also find more evidence that the “bad” behavior we see in others is often a side effect of some sort of mental disease, rather than a healthy dose of natural violence and aggression. Given the toxic environment we live in today, I suspect such diseases are proliferating, and that’s not a comment on human nature; it’s a sign of how unhealthy our planet is. It is our society - made up of government, media and business - that prescribes the norm, and it is the people who are fed up of having to choose between being ostracized or forced into submission. It appears that we instinctively wish to be equal with our partners, as equal as possible with our children, and equal with other citizens; we mostly desire to live in a cooperative way that promotes unlimited growth and accepts us for the people we truly are, because we know our true natures are no threat to anyone else. Regardless of what we are taught and what our stance is on world peace, we intuitively know that if we were allowed to live as we are without restriction or judgment, we wouldn’t hurt others.
If that is what we innately desire, what is stopping us? First of all, we are mere citizens. We do not make the laws. We vote, but we vote for preselected candidates in an election we have nothing to do with. In essence, we have no direct control over how our country is run. However, in numbers alone, we should, in theory, have the capacity to topple anything we want. We don’t, because we aren’t able to spread the message and mobilize enough of us to action. Not because the end goal doesn’t appeal to the vast majority of us; but because most of us have been successfully conditioned to believe that it’s not possible. That it’s ideal. That we as individuals are powerless. And that, in fact, is a topic discussed in the film - how our education and media train us to judge and fear anything outside of our status quo. I believe this is an inherent quality in all people to some degree - fear of the unknown has helped us to survive, but this fear is so primitive, and so based on a specific context (life or death) that we can overcome it - we have had to, in order to develop into such dramatically different beings than our apparent origins. But if this nature of ours is encouraged, nurtured, allowed to proliferate during our development, the conditioning can be difficult to shake.
And that appears to be the case. Ideals are just that - ideals. Ideals are for fools.
Never mind that the major innovators of our history were ridiculed in their time, just as we ridicule new ideas today. Never mind that the major social movements in the past century were considered idealistic in their time, but eventually succeeded.
Never mind that we accept vast changes in power, empires and lifestyles as the course of history in textbooks we read in school. Just as WE are on the verge of experiencing ourselves. IF we would accept that history continues.
