How to change, as explained by fictitious examples
Sunday, January 8th, 2006The first step towards real change is a change of perspective–a change in how you view the world.
I recently saw a couple movies that express excellent worldviews. The fact that they’re movies is incredibly important, because movies communicate messages in the most intelligible form known to man: stories. In Syriana, it isn’t about madmen bent on the destruction of the human race. It’s about a few ordinary men, doing their jobs. All they do is act in their best interests, and survive–even if it means securing themselves not in this world, but the next. It’s a symphony of tragedies. The relationship between these lives create the web of reality, and while their individual actions are local, together those actions make a global impact. The characters were closed-minded, paying no attention to the grand scheme of things, questioning nothing beyond their immediate environment or their place in it. That was their mistake. In the end some of them gain (or re-gain) a proper perspective, but sometimes it was too little too late.
In Lord of War, Nicolous Cage played the role of a salesman. He sold weaponry, and he was good at it. Arms proliferation is generally a Bad Thing, since there wouldn’t be the means for undeveloped countries to kill their own people or each other. Yes, they can use machetes (it’s happened) but shooting a gun is easier than hacking off limbs. But it doesn’t matter. This is a big world, no matter how small the internet makes it look. There are people in high places who, just as in Syriana, are just doing their job. What they do affects more people than they can imagine, but indeed they can’t imagine much if they don’t question their role in society and what that implies. Those that can’t are weak and do not wish to succeed, where success means leaving the world a better place than it was when you arrived. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
