[Procyona]

I watched a movie called Age of Stupid, and it made me think again of global warming, and what people can actually do to tackle the issue.

The movie was made in the year 2009, when global warming had a huge impact on the news and on peoples minds. And the issue is not of the papers yet: the temperature just keeps rising, the hurricanes grow fiercer and deserts keep spreading. The movie is a told by a man from the future, from the year 2055, who quite like maintains a building restorating the knowledge and wisdom of the mankind (and is like Noah Arch with two pairs of animals each, with an extra library and storage of art and video clips). The man looks tired, signs a lot, like he himself had carried the load mankind had. He is in front of a screen, talking, and screening videos of human records before the crisis really hit. He states that the thing is their fault, and as if to emphasis how, he turns to show the video clips.

The image the man tells from the past (2009) is cruel: In just few years the world as we know it has fallen apart, as the global warming has gone way out of hand. As main reasons they point out the consumption, making oil companies a huge culprit that has impoverished the poor countries, even though the made promises to do otherwise. The consumption of today is the sign of well being of people, sign of showing evolutionally that you have better genes, because you can fare better. You can think this as an extending one’s ego, but the second car or a huge garden have evolutionally the same function as the unnecessarily long tales of some male bird that they attract females with. For humans it gives high social status to have more things you can actually pay attention to. This reasoning is part of human nature, and the movie emphasises another point why the consumption continues: With our timespan, it is unnatural for people to tackle with problems still far away in the future, even though they would be too big to tackle ones the problem is really visible.

The storyteller shows more videos, and they explain a harsh truth: The global warming issue is hard to tackle, as the whole economy of today is almost entirely based on oil. From oil comes plastics, and plastics, well, they are everywhere, from plastic bags to toys and tooth brushes. To change this kind of society to more economical, the step is huge. For those who try to live otherwise the task takes an enormous amount of time and determination. And the wish to survive from hard conditions drives people more, as the poor and down driven people seek a happier life out of this, and dream of having fancy cars, or even revenge their father’s death, like one young boy refugee from Jordan wished to do. The ravine between poor and rich is not seeming to close, but instead people naturally want to survive, fight for the resources available. This is best shown with one Indian man, who wanted to give his poor people the chance for a better life, by starting his own airplane company. I know I am not one to talk about how they should live, I have been given so much more than those people, but I’m still worried that they look comfort in what is what they can own or do instead of what they already have.

Little comfort is given, but it all seems to go to waste. Even though people know that this is happening, and actually know that global warming is a subject they need to tackle, and soon. But they - we - are not stopping it, and even though there are people fighting for this, human mind is not accustomed to automatically notice this as an immediate treat. That is why we easily argue for energy savings - except when they are on our own backyard. There seems to be very little one person can actually do, as we all had to follow the same plan for global warming to stop. One could argue that we in Finland could already do much, but if the USA and China keep polluting as they do, then what is the point? But this thinking leads to kneel in front of the thing, naming it impossible.

At todays time, the global warming has not easened, because of the reasons mentioned in the vidoes, or something else. Instead of giving much answers to what people can actually do to help with the issue, we see the old storyteller sending all the movie clips he had shown as a record to the outer spaces and leaves the room. Even if this is probably supposed to give some comfort to the watcher (well, we are watching his records, aren’t we?), it leaves the watcher in uncomfort, in an urge to act, but no way to act it out. The man leaves the room, but his message lingers in the air: if you do not act, you are not ignorant, but stupid. Thank you, pal, but the outline of the problem doesn't leave me much to work on.   

[Fanda]

I saw today that movie Age of stupid and my opinion is that i tis another documentary film warning against self-destruction of civilization due to wars for resources, which advanced and developing companies are absurdly short-sighted wasting of energy, although they are largely dependent on unstable regimes that these sources may stop at any time distribute.
There are lot of ideas in that movie, but for me there was almost nothing new. I hear this information about global problems a lot from all the possible sources……. Since we come to Finland we have one course in school, i tis called ,,water and environmental” We have there teachers from all around the world, one teacher was even from Brazil! This course is focused on almost each topic which we can see in that movie. Troubles with waste, growing population, consuming energy, producing of emissions and lot of more things……. We are talking there about possible solutions and about applying this solutions in real. Most likely developed countries are quite active in taking part with this issue but worst thing i tis about developing countries! For example India, China and Africa as we could see also in that movie. They totaly do not care about that now.
We all can ask our self what are we doing for that if we are switching the lites off when we do not really need them, if we are turning running water off when we clean our teeth, the same thing about washing dishes, if we are using bike instead of car and if we are using car, how many people are inside. If we separate the waste or not.
Next thing i tis if we compare it with global word, how only few people can help. My opinion is that it should be mandatory course in each school to let all people know what is right!!!!!

The author of the document had good intentions. Show people that their stupidity is gradually worked out to perish. It should be to study a number of facts and forecasting and then we can set up a sort of ladder, what to expect and misses "(the quotation marks are there because it may or may not be) since 2005 for the 2055th This does not happen in the last less than 5 minutes film. remainder consists of how the old guy watching people who are victims of either 1 (people in Africa, Iraq), or 2 a kind of saviors and prophets because of what might happen. however, are small fish which do not need to pay attention. attention should be given to the contrary, the people who are behind the government, businesses, struggling to complete collapse (oil) and other large fish, who knew that this is happening and have the means to change. What we may do versus millionaire and oil magnates? Poor girl from Africa who drink water full of frogs? My attention had also Englishman from wind energy power plant company and silly protests of opponents).   

[Martin]

Age of stupid

This documentary has several good ideas. I like this playing with time lines. It´s describing from the point of future what we could do or what we didn´t do in past which is our present. I like this idea. I think that producers are trying to alarm people with this and on the other hand they are trying to give us hope that is not too late.

There was one guy who was describing value of emissions which we are producing. I don´t know numbers in this case. Guy didn´t introduce himself but according his numbers this dead is around the year 2015. After this will be too late. It seems that if he is right we are running out of time.
The film was made during three years and it´s telling six stories from different type of the world. All these stories are strong and emotional. I saw there undeniable misery of poor people. I saw more what I would like to see in Sunday evening. I also think that is good to know about it.

What is more difficult question is what I can do to help these people should I donate my extra things, should I start behave more ecological? Sure I should. If these numbers are correct, we have to. I´m just not so sure we can change our thinking so soon in such scale that it will be enough. What can I say for sure that every effort helps and certainly it better to start with this then. This is clearly good reason of this document.

Did you know?

The producers calculated the carbon footprint of the film's production to be around 95 tonnes of CO2, and its promotion around 57 tonnes.

The film's UK premiere was on 15 March 2009 in London's Leicester Square. The screening was held in a solar-powered ‘cinema tent’ and conducted without use of mains electricity. An independent audit conducted by Carbon Accounting Systems found the event's carbon emissions to be 1% of those produced by a normal blockbuster premiere. Linked by satellite to 62 cinemas around the UK, the premiere received a Guinness World Record for being the largest film premiere ever, based on number of screens.

10:10
An offshoot of The Age of Stupid project is 10:10, a UK-wide campaign encouraging everyone in the United Kingdom to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 10% in twelve months. Franny Armstrong (director of the film) conceived the 10:10 campaign to complement the ongoing promotion of her film: while The Age of Stupid is primarily aimed at raising awareness of climate change as a pending global humanitarian crisis, 10:10 is presented as a strategy for people to take positive action in the face of such an urgent and daunting problem.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

This quotation came to my mind when I started to mind at the beginning of this small essay. People are dominating space on this planet and want to say that we did a lot If I´m looking back to the history we did lot of mistakes but on the other hand we could do much more bad things and even we could destroyed our planet last century. We already have this power. Because we didn´t a have a hope that in this case Einstein won´t be right and we will awake soon enough.   

[Fanda]

[Procyona]

[Martin]

My opinion about what I can do to protect neture and try to make better future is that, everyone should do what is in his power if you are single person you can do something different then manager of company or politician. Otherwise you will be just depressed and this is useless.

For me one of the best thoughts in film was that people are not used to think mre then ahead then time of their life. This is true and it will take a lots of efforts to make a change.   

[Haveunique]

Interestingly, the movie was showing often one person at a time, showing us what each person was doing. Then I saw them being put into the bigger picture.... so indeed it makes sense to ask myself, what is my meaning of life and what and who do I care about? Is it just me? If yes, then am I happy? and so on, learning to ask the right kind of questions.... this is how I saw the movie, thanks to all for your ideas!   

[Fanda]

When we are talking about protecting planet, do you anybody know project ,,I will if you will'' ?

I Will If You Will is an Earth Hour campaign to encourage positive action for the environment, beyond the hour. What makes it special is that it empowers you - as an individual or as part of a community or organisation - to share your commitment to the planet with friends, family, colleagues, fans or even a whole nation.

The idea is simple. Someone makes a promise to do something if a certain number of people commit to take an ongoing action for the environment, beyond Earth Hour.

so......keep the promisses!

here is the link: http://earthhour.org/iwill   

[Procyona]

Thank you Fanda, that is really helpful, even though the event is already over for this year   

[Procyona]

To continue with environmental themes, I recently watched Studio Chiblis Mononoke Hime. Even though I had seen the film before, it’s struck me again very deeply.

Mononoke Hime tells of a young warrior Ashitaka, who gets a powerful curse on his hand while protecting his village from a rampaging boar god. In order to lift the curse, he is advised to travel far west to visit forest of dear god, a god of both life and death. he is also advised to see with eyes unclouded by hate. During his journey Ashitaka sees that even though his own village was not faring that well, the world around him is griefing from hunger and war, and the western samurai, an unknown culture, are not greeting him politely before striking arrows at him. The curse possessing his hand does not help either, but boar gods hatred gives him power beyond control.

Near the forest of the dear god, people strive to survive, too, and a town with a knowledge to produce metal is in war not only with the samurais, but also with forest gods. The townspeople and samurais do not respect the forest, or the gods, and are even off to get the dear gods head. In this western land Ashitaka meets San, a young woman raised by a wolf god. She shares the cultural perspects with Ashitaka, and knows the forest and gods well. She also despises humans, and is in fury to protect her home from people disturbing its peace in this turmoil.

Mononoke Hime is a tale of how old cultures and gods are treat by the new and more powerful cultures. It also is about human need to control, and use the nature, not as a gift like in ancient cultures, but as a source of immediate needs. To widen the view, it shows how powerful hatred can be: The war is shown to hurt all sides, both human and non-human. But the movie shows that the chaos can end, if there are still individuals seeking for balance, ‘seeing with eyes unclouded’.

In the end the nature and human world are, however, seen as separate dimensions, and even though the wolf girl San, also known as Mononoke hime, ‘monster princess’ by townspeople, and Ashitaka are fond of each other, they are not able to combine the cultures driven so far apart. Hope for peaceful living together seems like an only option, and so the battleground starts to grow a new green grass.