Movie inspired musings

[resqgeek]

Last night, I watched Waterland on IFC. It was a very good movie, very much character driven rather than plot driven, with stunning photography. Well worth a look if you get a chance to see it.

One piece of the movie struck a chord with me and I've been thinking about it all morning. One of the students in the narrator's history class questions the need to learn history because, as he says, "the world is all going to end." They never really elaborate on how or why he feels the end of the world is imminent, but it struck me as a common fear. I remember growing up afraid of the Soviet Union and the possibility of a global nuclear war destroying life as we know it. Today, its global warming that is the impending doom of the planet. It makes me wonder if we have a need to feel like the end is imminent. When one threat diminishes, we very quickly find a new threat to take its place. I find it a curious that, as a society, we seem to be so fearful of the future. I can't help but wonder why that is the case...

Comments

[kf-in-georgia.livejournal.com]

It makes me wonder if we have a need to feel like the end is imminent. When one threat diminishes, we very quickly find a new threat to take its place.

I don't think it's that we need to have a new threat. I think the problem is that humans stupidly keep creating new threats. None of these threats has been completely bogus, artifically inflated, or anything like that. They've been real threats. When one threat fades, we humans have another one waiting in the wings. (And Mother Nature can be counted on to drop a disaster on us periodically, so we'll always have that threat...)

[suellenr.livejournal.com]

I have fears, too. One, of Mother Nature just completely losing her cool w/us (pretty "punny", I know). The other being that most of the rest of the world hates us. I feel real fear about both these things biting us... if not the "end of the world", than the end of life as we know it. We'd only have ourselves to blame for some of it, too. It's depressing!

[skyring.livejournal.com]

We both live in countries that have been repeatedly nuked. I used to smile at all the greenies who feared that Australia would be a nuclear target if the US Pine Gap spy base in Central Australia were nuked. Like, who'd notice?

The nuclear test sites of the 50s are out there somewhere. It's all desert. Even more so now, I suppose.

Having said that, I've seen Hiroshima, and it's no laughing matter. There was a legitimate concern of nuclear holocaust, and there are any number of books and movies on the theme. Likewise envirodisaster. It's just that end of world stories make for good drama.