A New Beginning
Review by John Wages
TIM BENNETT
What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire
Vision Quest Pictures
Pittsboro, NC 2007
123 minutes. DVD. $24.00
www.whatawaytogomovie.com
Directed by Tim Bennett and produced by Sally Erickson, who makes several appearances in the movie, What a Way to Go (WAWTG) begins as a narrative of Tim’s life. As it describes his nascent awareness as a young man that something was amiss in the world, I felt a connection that only grew stronger as he described how he came to understand the root of our culture’s discontent and decided to do something about it.
This movie lifts the veil from civilization to show us the hollowness of what we once thought hallowed. In the style of Daniel Quinn, Bennett condenses the lifespan of our species into a short, simple story that can be told in about two sentences: “For a very, very long time, humans lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and survived. Then, they invented civilization and are in danger of extinction.” In this story, large-scale agriculture led to an ever-growing alienation from the real world that made it possible for humans to wreck first their bioregions, then the whole biosphere, without flinching. Some readers have over-simplified this synopsis and have equated it to the “noble savage” concepts of the Enlightenment. But, it is not the intent of this movie to idealize prehistoric humans. Instead, Bennett points out the obvious: if human species survived for a million years or more, they must have been doing something right. In contrast, modern humans now peer into the abyss of extinction after a mere 10,000 years.
In the first part of this film, “Waking up on the Train,” Tim Bennett tells his story of growing up in the American Midwest surrounded by wholesomeness and all-American-ness, “we walked like giants on the earth…unaware of our footprints.” We see film clips from the 1950s and 60s, reminiscent of The End of Suburbia, and what appear to be home movies of Tim’s childhood. Tim interviews Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, and several writers who are now on my reading list.
He illustrates the ephemeral nature of our civilization with a sand castle. It grows higher and more ornate until suddenly a wave wipes the slate clean. I was reminded of the characterization of human history in the book of Daniel as having feet of clay. Empires sometimes look invincible, but they can fall in a remarkably short time. Ancient empires held together by one strong personality, an Alexander or a Genghis, shattered as soon as their leader died. In modern times, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a more relevant example. Will the collapse of petrocivilization more closely resemble the Soviet or the Roman example?
This film interviews scientists and activists as it documents the four perils facing us in “The Train and the Tracks:” Peak Oil with attendant economic collapse, global climate change, mass extinction, and population overshoot. Each problem is well documented from a scientific standpoint but also explained clearly for any viewer to understand. WAWTG has many fewer graphs (it does have some) than An Inconvenient Truth.
The last half hour in this rather lengthy documentary seems to drag on unnecessarily. After the narrator has presented his case, and we are convinced the end of empire is near, the film continues with more “doom and gloom.” While I like the upbeat ending with its vision of an unspecified something better to follow civilization’s collapse, much of the last quarter of the film could be deleted without diluting the message.
Simple stories carry the peril that they will be taken literally—too uncritically, as has arguably happened with each of the world’s major religions in turn. Yet, the Quinnian approach of the Ishmael series, relying heavily on parables, has captured the imaginations of untold numbers of young people across the world and has inspired many of them to re-direct their energies toward cultural change. We need many more books and films that reach out to ordinary people who may not be familiar with science, technology, or history, but who experience the wrongness in our society every day.
All in all, WAWTG is a much-needed, broad-ranging expose of the major problems facing humans today and a reminder that any one of them could deal civilization a death blow. We can be most effective when we understand root causes and discover effective means to get at them. Unless the masses of ordinary, non-activist people are also aware of the story as it plays out, they will react as have past generations, by embracing fundamentalist religions, charismatic leaders, or fascism.
It is significant that this film is about the “end of empire,” rather than the end of civilization. We want to rid ourselves once and for all of domination—of man over woman, corporation over people, nation over nation, and whatever forms have yet to be invented. We’ve seen enough to know the outcome, and we don’t want to endure the rebirth of civilization and another cycle of empire. Rumors of the end of history in the mid-1980s were greatly exaggerated. We don’t know how the end will come, but we do know there are unsolvable, fundamental problems in many areas and inherent limitations to the unlimited growth on which all empires depend.
The first step in solving a problem is to state its nature correctly. If one has never read Ishmael or Culture of Make Believe, WAWTG could be a mind-blowing eye-opener. But it falls short on solutions. It strikes me that A Convenient Truth (the Curitiba story) would make a perfect companion to this film in a public viewing. WAWTG shows clearly the root of what’s wrong with our culture, and A Convenient Truth illustrates specific solutions, while showing a creative, unconventional approach to challenges.
Permaculture provides a toolbox of design solutions that can address all the problems documented so thoroughly by WAWTG. And while the “P” word appears on screen near the end, it was a little disappointing that the film made no mention of Mollison or Holmgren. Bennett may be too caught in his simple truth to imagine a merging of modern and archaic lifestyles.
Reprinted from Permaculture Activist #66