The 11th Hour brought forth many different concepts that could be looked at through many different perspectives. One of these statements resonates that “the deterioration of the environment is an outward mirror of an inner condition; like inside like outside.” The inner human condition was mentioned earlier in the film in a theory that consisted of a deep engrained “loss of beauty” which holds that we are disconnected from reality. Reality being the real and natural world and the theory consisting that deep in our psyche the reason we work and focus so hard on materialistic and artificial desires is because we’ve lost sight of the fragile and free beauty of nature because of civilization and the influence of the concrete jungle. Our society has been structured to consider wealth over public opinion, mostly silencing those who would fight this theory. This inner chasm of lost direction and alienation from the earth itself has led to this social separation that “man is king of nature” and is thus segregated and more powerful. Of course this is not true. The earth will always regenerate whether we are there or not, because the earth has all the time in the world, and we don’t. This idea of “loss of beauty” has driven the human race to this dire pivotal point to decide our future course of action, now. So far we haven’t been making the best decisions, and the suffering “loss of beauty” of the “inner condition” mirrors the outward affect of our actions against the environment.
How is this concept relevant in other literature we’ve looked at? How about “The Jungle”? We can see the deterioration of the environment and the people in it of Packingtown based on this idea of wealth over public opinion. Or how about “Mole People”? How does the inner condition of the tunnel people reflect into their reality?
Not only does this film critique and educate audiences about our environmental crisis, it also presents universal concepts that shouldn’t be ignored lest a domino effect should befall another area of human concentration.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with Lexy's statement that "Our society has been structured to consider wealth over public opinion". Because of the statement, I think human continue arguing that we should engage the ecology movement. However, after I read Lexy's post, I tried to compare the real situation of people between "The 11th Hour" and "The Jungle" in terms of the statement because I considered people who have to follow their wealth in terms of economy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I watched the scenes of factory in the beginning of the film and chapter3, these scenes reminded me the figure of Jugris who have to engage working in the factory in order to support his family. While it is true that human stop to break our ecology, I believe we also have people who have to work with environmental destruction, even though they would not mind and aware it. Because the universe value of wealth is set on the point of economy in this human's society, they would not able to work like as Jugris, even such job help to break our ecology unfortunately.