Foreign Films & Hacking Culture

I like independent and foreign films, though I admittedly have not stepped out of my comfort zone enough to explore all the wonderful options available.

While documentaries provide an information-dense broad overview, which I also like, independent and foreign films give the viewer a street-level view through a much narrower lens. In this way you get to really savor the finer aspects of world cultures and subcultures.

We are all human. We are all part of the same family. We are of the same essence.

And yet, borrowing from computer science as an analogy, we have both built-in hardware for processing information and add-on software to provide the cultural manipulation of that information.

Evolution is good. If you ever run a maze, you know you will hit dead ends and must turnaround. If you grow a tree, some branches will need pruning. The same is true for culture.

Culture must be able to grow. It should grow freely; too much tradition stifles that. Culture should grow with guidance; too much futurism and technology gets ahead of our wisdom. Culture must be able to reflect upon itself and prune what isn't working well; but you must be careful which parts and how much.

Previously, our collective consciousness was beneath the surface of holistic cultural awareness; who we are, what we're doing, and where we're going as a people. And by people, I now speak of the global village and the global citizen. Even the indigenous peoples, who were much better adapted to their environments before Europeans nearly exterminated all of them and the entirety of their culture, had grown this through eons of accidental trial and error. That's how evolution works.

We are now at a point where cultural improvement does not have to evolve entirely through accidental trial and error. And in fact, it must, if we are to survive. We are now at a point where we can critically examine our collective self and "hack" our very own regional and global cultural softwares.

Capitalism is destroying the planet and our relationships. Religious, political, and ideological fundamentalism creates unnecessary conflict. War is almost always unnecessary. Our global civilization raises our children like a production plant assembly line instead of as humans beings with human needs to satisfy.

The people don't like, want, or need authoritarian governments. Sexism and racism are senseless, but must be pointed out where found. Repressing sexual desires is unhealthy; maybe we should instead redesign our relationships.

Neither material wealth, hedonism, nor asceticism alone will provide a satisfied life. People need liberty, connection with community and the diversity of life, and the expression of creativity.

We can do better. We must do better.

There is so much unnecessary suffering caused by inequality, unexamined assumptions, and negative systemic feedback loops. The good news is that these can all be fixed if we are willing to open our hearts and minds, and take action.

I don't have all the answers, and even if I did I would never share them. That would defeat the purpose of evolution.