Soylent Green, eco-jetsetters, and growing up Doomer

[Ottava Karhu]

My partner and I have been talking a lot lately about how we got to where we are at, as people and as Doomers, including "formative years' experiences. What movies we saw, what ideas or events affected us, what we heard and thought as kids.

We watched /Soylent Green/ tonight. It was remarkably good--I gasped and teared up in all the places I did when I first saw it 30something years ago...and was amazed by how well it has worn. Charlton Heston was a much finer actor than I'd remembered, and his interaction with EG Robinson is breathtaking. There's a bit of low-budget hokum, and some suspension of disbelief is required in parts...but overall it was much more affecting and topical, still, than I expected after three decades.

Afterwards we were talking about other eco- and future-dramas of our formative years. My partner mentioned /THX 1138/, which he liked, but I found terribly boring. (Though would be willing to see again.) I noted to him that Stephen Spielberg's first commercial directorial project was an acclaimed 1971 episode of the TV series "The Name of the Game" called "LA 2017." It was based on a Philip Wylie short story. Wylie was one of my favorite authors when I was a budding Worldwatcher in my teens. The episode was filmed quite effectively though on a small budget, and it had a big meme-impact in the Seventies as well as a snapshot of SoCal's future eco-doom and corporate oligarchy.

In looking it up to see if we could find it via InterLibrary Loan or WorldCat, I found it's not on video. In Web searching, I ran across a TreeHugger.com column on "eco dystopia films." Reading the author's biography, after her column asserting that doom-and-gloom films represent "a failure of our imagination," was practically psychotropic.

Why?

Estimate her carbon footprint from her "about the author" bit, below. Then ask yourself: who is really suffering the failure of imagination? Storytellers looking ahead to environmental disaster, and tapping into people's deep-seated sense that things aren't going very well? Or "climate change communicators" who jet around the planet and "split their time" on opposite sides of the world as part of their model oh-so-green Lifestyle.

I am really sick of the eco-jetsetter telling everyone how to act and what to think, while they consume like Napoleon. In my view that is the real Doom: not the inevitable encounters with mathematics and thermodynamics, but the fact that now, so many of the biggest consumers stamp themselves green and smash the planet with ideological impunity. How can these people write autobio blurbs like the below and not get dismissed as charlatans? Any clues?

Also I'd love to hear what formative-years stuff you all remember as either supporting your pre-existing sense of Doomerism or putting you in that direction. Were there books, stories, comix, movies, plays? Memes? Did these cultural artefacts develop something already in you, or your family culture, or did you hear Al Gore and get upset...or what?


Ottava


About The Author
Ella Saltmarshe is slightly obsessed by climate change communications. As a Winston Churchill fellow she spent most of 2006 in Asia and Latin America meeting with climate specialists, decision makers and impacted communities. She returned passionate about using the communications industries to accelerate the transition to low carbon living. Ella has written climate reports for not-for-profits and governments. She has been published in a range of publications including The Financial Times, Monocle, Creative Review and Marie Clare. She is also a fiction-addict and has just finished writing her first novel with an award from the Arts Council. Ella splits her time between London, India and Pakistan.

[modnar]

A propagandist is a propagandist.  Comrades lend me your ear.    My belief system does not include a belief system.  The earth has been warming for 11000  years I don't guess there will be much harm in one more flight to Asia. 

I think the Irony is lost on the Passionista's.  Funny when we are living in the dark and the cold , some won't be will they?

The uncut THX is far from boring I thought.

[Bill Hicks (aka Ian Curtis)]

I grew up in the 70s and can clearly recognize that I had the "doomer gene."  I was naturally drawn to any forms of art and entertainment featuring disasters.  Some of them had quite a profound effect on me.  I's say my progression went thusly:

The movie Westworld.  The idea of robots going mad and slaughtering their human masters was one of the first films I vividly remember. 

Then I saw The Andromeda Strain and began to fear viral attacks from outer space.

The original Planet of the Apes movies left a huge impression on me.

As did The Omega Man, another Charleston Heston doomfest.

In 1975, the TV show Kolchak: The Night Stalker and its horror/paranoia theme presaged my young adult fandom of The X-Files.

But ultimately it was Stephen King's novel The Stand that cemented my doomerhood. 

[ralfy]

To see how denialism involves propaganda, check out the "Denial Machine" docu and the article "As the World Burns". Also, the earth has been warming, but not at the rate we're seeing right now. As for jetsetting, try to find out more about peak oil.

A propagandist is a propagandist.  Comrades lend me your ear.    My belief system does not include a belief system.  The earth has been warming for 11000  years I don't guess there will be much harm in one more flight to Asia. 

I think the Irony is lost on the Passionista's.  Funny when we are living in the dark and the cold , some won't be will they?

The uncut THX is far from boring I thought.

[ralfy]

Soylent Green is a very good movie, and there's even much to say about the villain in Omega Man, and certainly the Planet of the Apes series, Logan's Run, and definitely Strangelove. There are more listed in Wiki, PAMedia, and other sites. Some of the best ones include the BBC Survivors television series and Threads, together with THX, Brazil, and others. I also still remember The Day After, but the one I always mention to others is Testament.

[EWHM]

Lots of doomy movies were made in the 1970s.  The Green Revolution in transforming petrol into food hadn't really gotten into full swing and lots of people were looking at global famine in the near term as a near certainty.  Two big rabbits were pulled from a hat during the 70s.  The first was the green revolution, the second the discovery of the North Sea oil (and I beleive more oil also in Alaska as well).  US oil production peaked in the early 70s, from today's perspective it is hard to fathom that the US used to be the biggest oil exporter on the planet---a fact that had great influence on the course of WWII.
In general though, for the eco-jetsetter group, I have the same advice that I give the religious fundamentalists.  Either:
Avoid the use of moral language in making their appeals, appealing instead to the basic self-interests of the groups they're targetting OR
Insure that all of your major spokesmen are at least 2 Sigma or so above the mean in orthopraxis on whatever they're preaching on and that your adherents as a whole are at least somewhat above the mean.  The spokesmen factor is the most important though, because, in the case of the eco-jetset...it comes off as 'you peasants need to shiver in the dark so we can continue to enjoy our luxurious lifestyles' otherwise.  If you're calling for shared sacrifices, the masses need to have the reasonable belief that the sacrifices will actually be SHARED.  Frankly I'd prefer the 1st option, I have a visceral distrust of anyone who I don't know intimately who uses moral language to attempt to convince me of something.  Generally I find it's their self interest talking trying to manipulate me into making sacrifices on their behalf.

[tofu2u2]

The spokesmen factor is the most important though, because, in the case of the eco-jetset...it comes off as 'you peasants need to shiver in the dark so we can continue to enjoy our luxurious lifestyles' otherwise.  If you're calling for shared sacrifices, the masses need to have the reasonable belief that the sacrifices will actually be SHARED.  Frankly . . . I have a visceral distrust of anyone who I don't know intimately who uses moral language to attempt to convince me of something.  Generally I find it's their self interest talking trying to manipulate me into making sacrifices on their behalf.[/b][/i][/u]

BINGO!

I guess it's my Catholic upringing (parochial school & my mother was a nun before she got married so we really were immersed in it at home & at school) that has contributed to my ongoing anger about being BS'd over the sacrifices we all should make. I give as much credence into these eco-snobs as I give to the religous wingnuts. 

And Soylent Green is a great movie!

[Echo]

My Grandmother was the author of my doomer status. She raised her kids during the war in London. I heard many many stories of terrible shortages, her children being hungry etc etc. And the thiing that always sticks in my mind was her way of finishing these stories with:

"It all happened so fast. We didnt see what was coming"

When she died, my father and my aunt cleaned out her kitchen. It was was like a food pantry in there. Kilo's and kilo's of sugar. She never got over the war years.

And now i'm the same

[Spiderman23]

I watched The Matrix when I was 13 years old, and I still remember how it pretty much changed my entire worldview. I let go a lot of the trust I had for anyone in a position of power after watching that. IMO, the sequels didn't bring the same eye opening wonder that the first one did, but I still remember analyzing all the philosophical themes on all the movies for quite some time. I also LOVE The Animatrix, the spinoff series.

I also saw Fight Club when I was 13. I think I understood most of the concepts even at 13, but upon watching it again a few years down the road it left a larger impression on me.

[sittingstill]

Anyone remember the "machines are going to fail" scene from Deliverance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9LVRHigxiE#noexternalembed

[Grower]

As I recall, I hated all those movies as a youngster. I wouldn't watch The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. My limit was goofy B movies on Superhost, Saturdays on WUAB-TV in Lorain, way before it sold out to Murdick. But I spent many a day with tea at Grandma's kitchen table or in front of the fireplace at the back of the kitchen, talking history. She was born in 1911, so she was old enough to have lots of perspective about living before, during, and after the Depression, then during the War, when Grandpa was off in the Navy and she was home in her country house alone with Dad, severely asthmatic, born in 1939.

She was the first one in her family, 5 of 7, to go to high school, and so she was always an avid reader and loved keeping track of politics. She liked Roosevelt, and loved Truman in a time when he was fairly universally reviled. I remember her sitting and watching the Watergate hearings for days on end, though I didn't quite understand, at 10-11, what it was all about. Frankly, I never developed a sense of the difference between "real" history and family stories. It was ALL "my" history.

So I guess what I got was a both innate and environmentally induced insatiable interest and curiosity about what was going on. About what things were like then, and now I figure may well be again. It wasn't so much media inspired doom as it just was a good solid bullshit-meter combined with a rabid need to learn and find out things.

Funny. I just remembered having a dream last night with Grandma in it. Glad she's still around. 

[ralfy]

Anyone remember the "machines are going to fail" scene from Deliverance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9LVRHigxiE#noexternalembed

I didn't remember that. Thanks!

[Tinfoil Hattie]

.

[Ottava Karhu]

Thanks for the thoughts, all, on this; sorry for the delay, we gots early spring here and an accelerated garden year.

Nice to see I wasn't the only kid who watched this stuff. I have long wondered whether "nuclear war" wasn't as much of a dystopian cultural narrative as it was an actual technological possibility. In fact I've shelved my nuclear war books along with my dystopian fiction since the 1980s.

Writing to you all, hearing your thoughts, really helps me evolve my own thinking. Thank you for that, each one of you. Even those who read without commenting. It sure is a comfort to have a place besides my own house where I can kick these ideas around with some expectation of being understood.

I agree with EWHM about people who use moral language to persuade others (regarding my point on earth-saviors who consume more than entire small nations). When I worked in sustainability, various fields, I always opined that we should lead with the data and let people draw their own conclusions. But the foundation funders (i.e., rich individuals with corporate fortunes) always wanted the touchy-feely PR stuff, which set them up basically as capitalism's high priests.

In other words, it doesn't matter what you actually DO, because that could involve consuming less, and therefore cost the rich a portion of their bling. What matters is your IDEOLOGY, regardless of your actions.

That's why I left my career. Seemed I could make more headway on a reasonable and frugal life just having a reasonable and frugal life.

[EWHM]

Correct---you've just described what in religious circles is called "Orthodoxy"---or...right belief.  Orthodoxy is only an appropriate metric for religions of transcendant character, and not even all religions emphasize it (Islam, for instance, is mostly a religion of Orthopraxis---right behavior).  If a group is demanding Orthodoxy from you, they're a religion, any claims otherwise nonwithstanding.  If they're not demonstrating orthopraxis following said orthodoxy, they're not just a religion, but a BAD one (good religions sacrifice bad behavior, vices, and general malfeasance, bad religions sacrifice people).  But most of the eco-jetset are even worse than that---they aren't even after right belief or right practice---really just more right speech or right symbolic ritual (I don't know any fancy Greek or Latin terms for those, sorry).