Darwin's Nightmare

This film should be viewed by every person who has the luxury of eating a steak dinner, driving a new car, flying in an airplane, living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, going to good schools, etc, etc.  People of the western world and of technologically and economically developed countries need to see this film.  It not only depicts how the Tanzanian fish industry on lake Victoria is being taken advantage of, but it shows the manipulation of a natural resource, the destruction of a lake, weapons dealing to Africa, and most importantly it conveys the way of life for most of these Tanzanians living around the lake.  The horrors of everyday life and the constant struggles that it presents.  People living in their 300k-500k neighborhoods in the suburbs, driving around their new Tahoe, and eating out at Saltgrass don't understand the daily pains these people can go through.  In the film about 15-20 boys made a pot of food on an open fire by the lake.  Once it was done they were scrambling and fighting each other just to grab one hand full of the food.  A hand full, no silverware, all those kids got to eat for dinner that night was a hand full of what looked like rice.  While we leave more that that left on our plates when we go out to eat that'll just get tossed into the trash.  What it comes down to is greed.  There is something wrong with our world when we cannot feed those who are hungry, even when there is enough food being produce worldwide to easily feed everyone.  There is something extremely wrong with our world when a fishing community produces hundreds of tons of fish for European export, but cannot support their own hunger needs due to the cost of the fish after they catch it.  

to be continued...

Selective Interpretation

Most people are very biased to their own opinions.  They have a stance on certain issues and will maintain those beliefs through thick and thin.  Some people can be so blinded by their own beliefs, that when another idea is presented to help a situation, they won't give it a single thought, they will continue with their process of shutting every other option out besides their own.  These ideas and behaviors our most prevalent in people's political stances.  Whether it be abortion, taxes, military, war, healthcare, gay marriage, global warming, etc., these ideas become so engrained in us we forget which way is up and which way is down.  This can usually be broken down into two groups: Democrats and Republicans.  Not liberals and conservatives, because those words have lost their true meanings and have just become other titles for democrats and republicans.  What I am getting at, is that our country isn't getting anything accomplished because all our representatives and leaders are wearing blinders.  They only see what they want to see and they only hear what they want to hear.  In light of the presidential campaign, there are people that actually want George W. Bush to have an illegal third term or say they will move to another country if Hillary Clinton is elected.  I've actually heard someone say that if Obama or Clinton is elected they will probably get assassinated.  People are so blinded by these political ideals, and it goes both ways, democrats and republicans.  Now, these ways of thinking affect how and what we see and hear.  A person who is a democrat will listen to democratic talk shows and watch CNN, just like a person who is a republican will listen to republican talk shows and watch FoxNews.  These preconceptions also hinder how we watch movies, especially documentaries.  Documentaries are supposed to inform and get people to think of things.  Yes, there are some documentaries that abuse this and use the same blinders that I was talking about in our ability to take in information, there are also blinders that restrict are ability to only give the information that we want to give.  What I'm trying to get across is that people need to be more open to new ideas and new things.  As humans we are very smart, but we are also very stubborn.  We get so stuck in our ways, just look at our dependency on oil.  We are so stuck on fossil fuels that instead of getting people to make change, we are stuck paying three to four dollars a gallon.  Be open to change and new things, and don't watch movies with preconceptions...you won't ever enjoy them.

What About Our Coke Bottles

The film The Gods Must Be Crazy is one of the best examples of the mixing of cultures and how some people still live a very, very simple life and even the smallest thing, such as a Coke bottle, can through off their society.  The film maker does an excellent job of relating issues to all people, this is one of the main reasons the film has been such an international hit.  They use comedy to help describe somewhat touchy issues with a Coke bottle, something we can all relate to, as the catalyst.

I found it quite interesting how the civilized people, whom the bushman believed were gods, couldn't get anything right.  They were always messing up what seemed to be the simplest tasks.  The little bushman would laugh at them and how silly they were acting, even though it was normal behavior for civilized people.  However, when we look at who was really the civilized people in this film, was it really the so called "gods" or was it the bushmen.  The civilized people were running around killing one another, one of them was digging through elephant poop, others put the bushman in jail even though he couldn't understand the language being spoken, let alone the laws.  At the same time, in the middle of the Kalahari desert the bushmen tribes were living their lives without violence, without possessions, without money, and without shame.  It wasn't until something from the civilized world came into their world in the form of a Coke bottle, did the tribe start to lose it's sense of peace and community.

Is it possible that at one point all of us were as peaceful and gentle as the bushmen of the Kalahari?  I believe, that in a metaphorical sense and on a grander scale, the human race stumbled upon a Coke bottle some thousands of years ago.  However, instead of throwing it off the end of the earth, we used it, abused it, fought over it, and so on until the now present day human race has such a collection of Coke bottles of numerous sizes, there is no way we could ever throw them off the end of the earth.  Coke bottles could represent government, religion, possessions, guns, economies, and so on.  The question is, can we live with our Coke bottles, or will one day they have to be destroyed?