So, yesterday I took my lady out to the movies for Valentines day. We had planned to go to the city, but the snowstorm kept us local. Anyway, We had a nice dinner and watched two movies, Taken and Slumdog Millionaire. Taken was a decent movie. It played on our fear of other countries. Slumdog Millionaire was an excellent movie, if you like human dramas. However, there was on thing about the movie that was very disturbing to me, the ending.
Slumdog Millionaire was the first movie I had seen from Bollywood, that being the movie companies producing films in India. My impression of the general theme of the film was that of a boy that overcomes extreme hardship, works hard and shows initiative and savy as a businessman, then eventually gets a chance to obtain fantaatic wealth, thereby freeing him from the cycle of poverty. Sounds a bit like the American Dream doesn't it?
Let me tell you what I think of the American Dream. It is in its essence freedom through hard work and the eventual aquisition of wealth. Sounds great, but if you consider a population such as that in the United States all vying for the same resources to get rich, then you have a problem. What happens when the resources become scarce and the ability to chase that dream becomes non-existent? Basically you see what we have going on in the world now.
Now, lets transplant that dream into a country of over a billion people who live mostly in grinding poverty. The scene at the end of the movie makes you understand that India loves and admires western culture. Theme of the movie imples that they also love and admire the American Dream.
Let me say clearly now that this dream, this way of life, will destroy this world. Not in the Death Star blowing up Alderaan sense, but a fundamental change in climate that will inhibit our ability as people to sustain our way of life and our population. This will happen in our lifetimes and will serve as trying, painful times for our children and grandchildren.
This is the price of our greed.
