10 - An ideal society

by Samantha, Elisa and Jessy 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peSpUDMcGR8

     We all want to change something in our society; however small the change is it would be important in order to get closer to what we think is an ideal society. Many of us wonder what would be the perfect society and what would take us there. Throughout history people have tried to create the perfect society but always failed in the way. Utopia refers to the idea of a perfect society. A society with an ideology of life perfect without mistakes, where everyone can live an ideal life and the word ‘equality’ reign. Our current modern society makes us think progress will take us to the perfect society but we really think they are right. The films Surviving Progress and No Impact Man, show us the idea of ​​utopia as something that we can get but we have to start changing some things and making some sacrifices.

                     "No Impact Man"                               (Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein, 2009, USA , 93 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjpAboJsXKk

         Colin Beavan in this documentary shows how small changes in our lifestyle can make a big difference for our planet and can give us great benefits for our life. Sometimes we do not realize the damage we cause to the planet and how it affects us no just now but also to future generations. Would be good if we began thinking how in 25 years we could wipe out the world's resources and how this can destroy all the life in the planet. We can make the relation no planet no life and this involve us so we can finish with our life in this process. Colin is a man committed to the planet and determined that if a person starts with the change giving the example for other people and they will be convinced to start the change too. This determination gives him the idea to start the No Impact Man project with his family, this project consists in for a year they won't cause harm to the planet and they will start a better lifestyle.

         Utopia means an ideal society but this does not have to relate that all live in a consumerist style and we can have whatever with want, but rather as a society that come together and start thinking about solutions to our problems when everyone can give his ideas for how can we create the ideal society . But this is not only thinking of solutions because everyone could do this alone but rather unite in practice in order to obtain results we all hope for our society and start the change for a better society.

        Colin teaches us that a person and his family start changing little things in their house this is already a big difference. These changes will not only bring benefits to our planet but also for our family that will work together for obtain the results, start changes makes us share more quality time with those we love. Everyone in the house can be involve in this change Colin shows us this when he involves his little daughter in all the practices one example is when they show she how to wash their clothes without machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4AESIu14I

       Some of us have heard of the three R's but not put into practice. This is the foundation of the No Impact Man project; the first step is to reduce and is perhaps the most important. The more reduce is equal to more benefits can we obtain , an example of this is when the family of Colin began to reduce electricity use in your home and the use of transportation to get to their jobs this brought them profit decreased their electricity bills and a more active life.The second step is to reuse, this will bring benefits to the planet and to reduce our spend on packaging that normally increase the cost of all the products, an example is when they begin to use food jars more than once. The last step is to recycle, it helps not to deplete resources and reuse as much as we can and a good example of this is when they begin to reuse clothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

         Colin implements more than thirty ideas for his project, but this does not mean that we should start with the thirty but rather we can start step by step and gradually implemented so few we want. What matters in all this is to start thinking about our future and how we as individuals can do for begin the change for our planetand not only that we can start the change that our entire society need.

http://noimpactproject.org/explained/

                  Surviving Progress

      (Mathieu Roy , 2011 , Canada, 82 minutes)

       How do you describe progress? Is it through your efforts or actions or is it the nature of how humanity and technology has advanced? Or the cultural and ethical advancements in the past two hundred years?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IAs3tMZneM

      Surviving Progress is a Canadian documentary made in 2011 by Mathieu Roy. It runs for about an hour and 22 minutes and it fits rather closely to No Impact Man in the same vein of ecological problems with the Earth and humanity.

      Surviving Progress tells us that if we don’t change our ways, in a few decades, or centuries, we’ll be fighting for simple necessities like land mass (due to global warming), wealth and water. These kinds of consequences would be considered the fall of modern society itself and civilization. There’s also mentions about “humans becoming gods” and the god complexes some people have today when it comes to progress and engineering that as a society we’ve been getting cocky and our ‘improvements’ can easily lead us to a dead end or a ‘trap’ (We might think at first that everything’s fine and dandy, then you realize the severity of the event and there’s no escape.)

        No Impact Man does make a mention about how much garbage and waste we make today when it comes to society (which leads to pollution) and how corporations almost rule all and that society is materialistic. Surviving Progress also talks about how our economic and poor distribution of wealth is so unhealthy and inflated that if ecological resources, space for food doesn’t catch up to us and cause the beginning of an ecological collapse, the distribution of wealth will and its effects would be catastrophic, as the only people who have millions and millions of dollars are powerful figures like the government or head of companies.

        Another unique idea that the movie brings up is that today, everything is at the tip of our fingers through the internet. We can connect with people from all around the world to discuss similar things or just to watch the news unfold that many people believe that the internet can serve as one huge human ‘brain’ network. Before the internet everybody was secluded in their own societies and if there was information of other countries or cultures, it was rather muted or hushed away. But with the internet we can easily show our humanity and express it through social media and raise awareness….which has led to popular social networks like Twitter to be banned in several countries.

 We can do something 

        By watching these two documentaries we can establish two facts about the human race, we have grown very dependent on items which we do not need because we are growing into an over consuming population which means that we will exploit our natural resources which can result into disaster!

       In the film that we watched in class : No Impact Man, we can clearly see that it is very difficult to leave behind bad habits and that it is incredibly overwhelming as a viewer to know  that it’s possible to live without the polluting products that we have become accustomed to.

      In the documentary of Surviving progress, we can see that the evolution of society is not entirely a positive matter for many negative reasons. Basically it is in a way the same concept as the film: No Impact Man, because it shows that we are being careless into exploiting our resources, over consuming and that all this might bring a disastrous end to our planet.

     In No Impact Man, Colin Beavan’s idea was to cut off everything that might be a huge impact on society and the well being of our environment. For example: He turned off his electricity for approximately six months, he hasn’t used any chemicals that can be flushed into the sewer lines, and so on.  His main idea was practically achieved because many organisations and schools started practicing this activity.In Surviving progress, the main idea has been clearly demonstrated by the negative images and many theories on how the outcome of our irresponsibility could be horrendous. Has it had an impact on our society? Maybe not, due to the fact that most of us refuse to give up our “necessities”.

     Colin Beavan has challenged our understanding of the world by showing us that we can survive with the simplest things that don’t bring much impact on the environment. We don’t need high quality products, or technology to survive and these are one of the main things that many people can’t deal with. As it was mentioned earlier, many schools and organisations have tried following his footsteps and making this idea grow bigger.The surviving documentary can challenge our understanding of the world in the simplest way. After watching it we could easily realize how much damage our intellectual evolution has been done to our planet without noticing it. We see the horrors going on around us even more clearly than before and gives us an idea of what should be done to prevent this from becoming bigger than it already is. Many viewers might only feel sad about the situation and still end up not doing a thing to help the situation while others might finally have enough and speak up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9wYQKGyVD4

    There are a few ways we can relate the message of these two documentaries to our own lives and society. There are many people trying to fix our problems of overconsumption and many volunteers strive for their voice to be heard when it comes to taking care of our planet. 

                    Be the change 

      “We're gonna change the World by changing ourselves. I don't believe that you can really change the World outside until you change the World inside yourself. And I really do believe that love, if you really have love in your being, then it's very difficult to be unkind or cruel to another person or the planet. And I think, I really believe that we, as a species mankind, we really need to live from our heart more. And when that happens we will stop being destructive to each other and destructive to the planet. But we've lost touch with that, and that's how we can commit such cruelty to each other and the planet we live on.”

                -Rodger Hodgson - The voice of Supertramp

          Protect the planet for future generations does not mean giving up our lives or abandon everyday activities. By adopting simple habits and common sense, each of us can save energy, reduce pollution affecting the temperature of the Earth, and conserve our limited natural resources. 

       The challenge is big and can seem overwhelming. But when many people make small efforts, these add up to make a positive change on a large scale. The main thing is to start the change for our planet.