Surviving Progress
Surviving Progress
| 04 November 2011 (USA)
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Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

Reviews
Exoticalot

People are voting emotionally.

ActuallyGlimmer

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

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Jenna Walter

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Isbel

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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Larry Silverstein

This documentary, by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, asks us to use our brains and think "outside the box" about what progress is and whether certain types of it can be detrimental to us as humans.It combines clips of interviews with various authors, theorists, and interested parties with on the ground images of what the interviewees are referring to. I would say the basic premise of the film is that , since the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago, large corporations, governments, and economic theorists have been hammering away at a particular theme. This theme tells us that high levels of production and subsequent high levels of consumption must be maintained to be prosperous in this world. Unfortunately, this has been maintained with little regard for the inevitable depletion of the world's natural resources. Poorer countries, who often are rich in certain resources but are in debt, are coerced into selling off these resources to pay their debt. Thus, the bankers, corporations and the rich get richer while the rest of us get poorer.Much of the film cautions that we as a human species living on an interconnected planet must try and apply the "brakes" to this consumption "craziness" and start to sanely plan for our future.I found this documentary quite interesting and it made me stop and think about what we may be doing to our planet.

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bm-hadapsarkar

All the issues are very nicely addressed with the detailed pros and cons. very thought provoking and I hope we all learn from it and start respecting the mother nature and the surroundings... once again congrats to the team for making such an effort to show us where do we stand today!!!! I hope the movie is showed to all the school and college going students to make a general awareness and are being made aware of how can they can make there commitment in the coming years. The detailed research of the contributors and there experience will surely guide us all in our way of looking towards our daily life and help make a change.

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ALB

This liberal feel-good (or feel-bad) documentary, adapted from a book by Ronald Wright, makes the case that our society is a kind of bubble that may soon burst. Specifically, Wright argues that modern humans have fallen into a "progress trap." As with ancient hunters who became so adept at slaughtering mammoths that they killed off the source of their wealth, we have become so adept at exploiting natural resources that we are exceeding the capacity of Earth to regenerate them. He gives 1980 as the date when we began to do this on a global scale, although the film echoes people like Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, whose warnings of catastrophe began 40 years ago and proved, at least, premature. It's not quite clear why 1980 is the key date, but perhaps it's not coincidental that that's when Ronald Reagan was elected. That's also when the United States began to experience an increasing concentration of wealth that continues. The film implies, not entirely correctly, that this is a phenomenon everywhere. Economist Michael Hudson links wealth concentration to the fall of the Roman Empire and says "that's what's threatening to bring in the Dark Ages again."Only the fiercest anti-environmentalists would deny that the explosive growth in output and wasteful use of resources in the last decades brings challenges with it. But to declare, as the film does, that a phenomenon that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia since 1980s is a "failed experiment" is at best premature and overstated. Geneticist David Suzuki broadly criticize economics, which is "not a science," for ignoring pollution and other societal costs. "Economists call these externalities…that's nuts." However, plenty of economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, have written about the problems of externalities. Suzuki seems to disparage the profession for having created the very term. Repeatedly, the documentary argues by such assertion, rather than proof, wielding very little empirical data. A detour to Brazil provides some detail about deforestation, but, generally, I longed for more specificity.To be fair, proving such a bold thesis is well beyond the purview of a feature-length documentary. Wright's book, which I have not read, dwells more on past civilizations than our current one. Given that it's far easier to explain the past than predict the future, perhaps the directors, Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, should have followed that path. Alternately, they might have deeply delved into some specific areas where the negative effects of human activity are undeniable. There's a lot of talent on hand here—the talking heads include Jane Goodall, Stephen and Hawking, and authors Robert Wright and Margaret Atwood—and building a film around any one of them might have been better than giving each a few sound bites. One participant, writer-engineer Colin Beavan, actually made his own film about his and his wife's experiment in non-consumption. Though based on a gimmick, Beavan's No Impact Man: The Documentary nonetheless seriously grapples with the idea of conservation in a more concrete (and entertaining) way.The positives of the film include some nifty time-lapse simulations and the opening and closing segments, in which gorillas trying to solve a logic problem. (This sort of ties into the idea that our brains have not evolved too far beyond that of apes, so we're lousy at anticipating long-term consequences.) But the most worthwhile portion of the documentary is the one about solutions, which includes the expected warnings (by Beavan and others) about the need to conserve but also interviews with geneticists, notably Craig Ventner, about the possibility of generating artificial organisms to repair damage or even improve upon human physiology. Like everything else here, it's quite speculative, but since the turf is less familiar, also fascinating.

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DavidTheWise33

I was lucky enough to attend a screening at my local university with the director of this documentary, it is a fascinating little piece about the social and economical dynamics of the present day compared to ancient mighty civilizations that have fallen. It features appearances by many notable speakers including Jane Goodall, David Suzuki and Stephen Hawking.It's a fascinating study of where we stand now and where we are heading.It touches upon many recent topics as well, which might date it slightly, but otherwise, it's a great viewing experience. I definitely recommend this documentary, it will lead you to question today's society and provide much food for thought.

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