Today in class, we watched this short movie called The Story of Stuff. It's this woman who researched how all our 'stuff' is made, and where it goes once we throw it away. You all should watch it here. It's so interesting, and brings up a lot of issues we don't think about very much. I don't think everything she's saying here is gospel truth. But it definitely got me thinking.
After the movie we had a discussion, and someone brought up this quote from Saturday by Ian McEwan. It's kind of long.
"How restful it must once have been, in another age, to be prosperous and believe that an all-knowing supernatural force had allotted people to their stations in life. And not see how the belief served your own prosperity- a form of anosopnosia, a useful psychiatric term for a lack of awareness of ones own condition. Now we think we do see, how do things stand? after the ruinous experiments of the lately deceased century, after so much vile behavior, so many deaths, a queasy agnosticism has settled around these matters of justice and redistributed wealth. No more big ideas. The world must improve, if at all, by tiny steps."
Things don't operate the way they should. The world doesn't work like it was created to. Some people have nothing and some people have too much. We watch the tragedies of the world happen on the news from our dinner tables and often can't motivate ourselves to do anything about it. I don't know where my shirt was made, or who made it and whether or not they have enough food. I don't know if the person who sold it to me was paid fairly and I don't know where it will go once I finally give it up. Isn't that a problem?
I don't know exactly what I even think about all this yet. Or what I think I should do with it. But what I really want is for you to watch that movie and read that quote and tell me what you think.
current song: Camera Talk by Local Natives
No comments:
Post a Comment