The 1976 movie, "Soylent Green" was ahead of its time in portraying the dangers of non-sustainable growth and the consequence of an absence of environmental stewardship. It is in all probability the first movie (not documentary) that showed the possible effects from climate change to mankind. One of the interesting aspects of the movie is that despite the futuristic setting, it wasn't portrayed in a futuristic manner (as opposed to other movies with starships, lasers and teleporting devices). In fact, all of the technology presented in the film was available at the time the movie was produced.
This movie was made to be gritty and not necessarily "fantastic". In many ways it intended to be a warning of the path that were on, and continue to be on. This movie has become somewhat of a cult classic, but was still fairly popular when it first came out.
To conclude our study of this film, consider the following questions:
Are we on the same path (as a global society, and or as a nation) that precursed the plot (as was presented in the movie by Sal when he recounts why the world was in such dire straits)? Can we control our outcome? Do we want to control our outcome as a human race? What must we do if we are to help control our outcome on this planet?
You must post you responses to the questions no later than this Sunday 11:59 p.m.
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12 comments:
I feel like this is a hard question to answer. Personally, I can see us going down the same path that led to the decline of society in the movie, but I also can see positive things that are happening to fix the situtation. I firmly believe that the human race will always be driven by consumption, but history has given us many examples of how we manage to get through tough situations before we completely destroy ourselves. For example, we are beginning to pass legislation limiting the amount of pollution companies can produce, we are limiting which lands can have resources pulled from them, and we are also beginning to educate youth about the health of the environment. People are quick to judge which direction we are headed, and yes, we could be more environmentally aware, but it is narrow minded to think that our future will be as extreme as the one in Soylent Green. We must be environmentally self concience and be better stewards than we have been in the past. We should also continue to protect what resources we have. Finally, we should allow an innovative society to generate new technology that can help us be less dependent on fossil fuels. Humans will always fight for survival when threatened and the threat of running out of resources needs to be bigger and better advertised before the majority of people will act.
As the comment before says, the answer to these questions are a little more complicated than yes or no. It seems that we are on the same path as the movie portrayed but I don't think that it could become so extreme so quickly. I also believe that we can still change our outcome, we just have a lot of work to do before we get there. Protection of our resources is probably the biggest problem we have now, but we still have time to save them, it's just a very small window. We need to create better public policies, pass legislation and give better education in developing countries. Even though the developed countries have problems of their own, they still need to sacrifice a little to help the developing countries get on their feet. The developing countries are the places that have the most population, the worst education, the most poverty and the most diverse amount of resources (for now). We need to help developing countries create a step-by-step program that they can follow and we also need to provide them with better education and better technology so in the long run, they can help themselves.
Soylent Green is at its core a satire film, meaning that it criticizes the mistakes we've made but isn't cynical in that it would have us believe that there isn't a way to fix the problem. So yes, we're on the same path as the plot of the movie indicates (i.e. one that leads to an unsustainable future) but there is a solution to the problem, ugly as it may be. I think that the outcome of the world is completely within our control, we just have to cut our losses and change, which is going to take time as change in this case is expensive to the people who care about money. The change itself is simple enough: we can't continue to exist on things that can only be used once.
I think we, as a society, nation and world are on the same path as the plot in Soylent Green. We are obviously not at the same spot on the path as the movie, but that doesn't mean we won't reach that point sometime. Before we are in as much trouble as the plot of the movie, we need to make some drastic changes and turn-arounds. We need to acquire technology to recycle all of our post-consumer products and waste, we need to harness a completely renewable energy source. We may not have the power to control the outcome of the human race yet, but when we develop new technologies we will be able to control Earth's future.
I think that we are completely on that path to the extent of having to settle for basic means or nourishment rather than the preferred produce we consume currently. We are becoming over populated at an alarming rate and I feel that nature will deal with this in a very disturbing way but it is the natural course towards balance. We have fought off nature's many attempts at curbing this overpopulation but I think our luck should run out in the next century to come.
At this moment in time I think that we, as a global society, are on the same path of decline as was presented in “Soy lent Green”, in the sense that we are currently experiencing global warming and an increase in world population, both of which contribute to the depletion of Earth’s resources. We are certainly not at a point as extreme as was depicted in the film, but if we don’t make any changes to the consumptive habits of the human race I can see things eventually reaching that level. With that said, I don’t think it will ever be as bad as in the film, because as driven as humans are by the desire to consume everything they can, they’re also driven by threats. The threat of limited resources is already present and will continue to grow as long as the population increases and our patterns of use stay the same. With an increasing number of people becoming aware of this fact, the push for environmental stewardship is now greater than ever before. There are many things we need to do in order to create the necessary change. The main goals should be to limit emission of greenhouse gases, develop an energy source that allows to us to significantly lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, promote global recycling practices and to educate/create awareness so the same mistakes don’t happen again. We do have control over our outcome as a human race. It’s simply a matter of people practicing what they preach.
I never got to see the end of the movie Soylent Green, but I still know that it is people, and I will do my best to answer these question. I think that we are on the same path as Sal recounted, but to a lesser degree. We seem to be more aware of the problems facing the world and people than those in the movie were, and consequently I think that we are more prepared to change our ways and avoid that future. I think that the outcome of our situation can be controlled, but only with drastic measures, but something will happen. I think that inside humans will always want to control everything, so we will want to control the outcome of the human race as a whole. To help control our outcome on the planet we have to take measures to prevent overpopulation and a lack of stewardship, no pun intended.
The movie "Soylent Green" presents a very unpleasant and overall horrible consequence that could occur from the actions we as a global community are currently taking. The circumstances and attitudes presented by Sal in the movie mirror in many ways those of people today. However, our advantage is that we still have time to fix the problem. The beautiful world is still all around us and we can see what we would be missing by letting it go to waste. We are informed about the problem, and our current challenge is to act on it. I think the future is important to us as a race, and while some people are not placing the environmental and social situation in their top priorities, we still collectively have an aim of having our world continue to function and provide a comfortable home for us as it does now. There are many steps involved in controlling our outcome. As many people have said above, we need to seriously monitor our environmental impact, by conserving energy and finding new cleaner sources. We also need to implement some sort of method of controlling overpopulation if we are to prevent the ridiculous overcrowding that was seen in the movie. Our population can and will max out and it will make it an unpleasant world for all. Finally, education is super important, as always. We can't allow people be stay or become ignorant because that leads to excessive control by corporations or the government and no ability or will to act out. We must maintain our freedom, and freedom entails knowledge.
I feel like I don't have anything new to add. We are on a grim path and it would seem that we are going to continue, but we are making changes small as they are. I believe changes will continue to be made hopefully becoming more and more drastic. It is our instinct to react to disaster by trying to save ourselves. This situation is tricky because it's not as obvious to everyone as it may seem. In every other disaster we see or feel it's weight on the earth very strongly, with this we have to make it stronger faster by using advertisement and education because no one is going to react instinctively without that motivation.
We do not live in the world of Soylent Green, but by continuing our patterns and exploitation of resources we could one day get there. Soylent Green describes a world that is, above all, extremely overpopulated. Therefore, in order to control our outcome we need to find a solution for overpopulation, and spread it globally. The problem extends past just overpopulation though.
To overcome and change our outcome, we need to start using the Precautionary Principle in our approach to the environment and society. There should be a cycle, where whatever one person destroys, they must also fix. So, when someone cuts down a tree they would have to plant seeds, or when causing harm to animals, they would have to support and care for a different animal. The key, though, to changing our outcome is to learn how to work together as a global community. Developed countries such as the US should be providing the support, the shoulder to lean on for the developing countries which may need help with food or poverty. With such aid developing countries may also succeed in limiting their steadily growing population and we will find ourselves living in a better world.
The movie shows us a very real possibility of the outcome of our over consumption as a global community and especially as a nation. In the movie Sal expresses many opinions that are similar to ones being stated by people today such as a warning of climate change and overpopulation. If we are to control our outcome one of the main things that needs to happen is people have to be shown what we are going to lose if we continue on this path and then presented with an alternative. Almost all people say that they want to change the outcome we are so inevitably heading towards but then make no action to support the change beyond words. To control our outcome it must go beyond just informing people, we need to somehow (it seems impossible) make people unapathetic when it comes to knowing what they are consuming and what is necessary.
I believe that if we continue to do what we are doing today we would eventually be in such dire straits as those in the movie. However, it is extremely unlikely that we would actually keep doing what we're doing now as things will change and we will have to react to those changes. If the world's population were to grow so large as to the extent depicted in the movie, there would eventually be an extremely high death rate to compensate in the poorer areas of the world as resources were used up. We could stop things from getting this bad, but I don't know if we will. I think the best thing we can do right now is focus on improving specific areas then widening our focus slowly over time, rather than trying to save the whole world at once. And I suppose we're already doing that to some extent, so I don't really have anything useful to say on the issue.
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