"Children of Men" is a dystopian science fiction film released in 2006, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The movie is based on P.D. James' 1992 novel of the same name. Set in the year 2027, the film presents a bleak vision of the future where humanity faces an existential crisis.
Synopsis:
In the near future, the world has plunged into chaos due to a global infertility pandemic. For the past eighteen years, no child has been born, and society has descended into despair, disillusionment, and societal collapse. Nations have crumbled, and authoritarian regimes have taken control to maintain order.
The story follows Theo Faron (played by Clive Owen), a disillusioned and apathetic former activist who now works as a bureaucrat in a totalitarian government. He becomes involved with a group of rebels known as the "Fishes," led by his ex-wife Julian Taylor (played by Julianne Moore). The Fishes are fighting against the oppressive regime and seeking to protect a miraculous hope that has surfaced in the form of a pregnant woman.
The film takes a dramatic turn when Julian contacts Theo to help transport a young African refugee named Kee (played by Clare-Hope Ashitey) to a group known as "The Human Project." The Human Project is rumored to be a scientific organization working to find a cure for global infertility. To ensure humanity's survival, they need to protect Kee, the only pregnant woman in the world.
Theo reluctantly agrees to help Kee reach The Human Project's vessel, the Tomorrow, which awaits her at sea. The journey is fraught with peril as they navigate through a war-torn and increasingly chaotic society, pursued by both government forces and other factions seeking to control Kee and her unborn child.
Throughout the film, themes of hope, redemption, and the value of human life are explored. Amid the crumbling world, the unexpected pregnancy offers a glimmer of hope for humanity's survival. As Theo and Kee forge a profound connection, Theo begins to rediscover his lost sense of purpose and rekindles his desire to fight for a better future.
"Children of Men" is a gripping and thought-provoking film that skillfully combines elements of dystopia, political commentary, and human drama. It portrays a world on the brink of collapse, where hope emerges from unexpected places, and the survival of humanity hangs in the balance. — ChatGPT
If no one were able to reproduce, no new generations of humans, would society fall into a chaotic mad-max scenario, or would things continue as normal, albeit with some depressed folks who aren't able to have children? — schopenhauer1
It would seem so. We have been failing spectacularly to secure any kind of future for the children we already made and the ones we're still making. And this is very much in keeping with the pattern laid down by our ancestors.Rather, the premise that reproduction represents an all-encompassing motivating force is flawed. — schopenhauer1
It's quite plausible, especially in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary. AFAIK, there aren't any grounds to doubt it. :smirk:The idea is that the belief in a continuing future society serves as a driving force to prevent society from falling into chaos.
Is this assumption true, though? — schopenhauer1
I am familiar with the plot, but have neither read the book nor seen the movie. Have you seen it? Is it any good? — BC
So in this case, it is just the "idea" that no future people would exist after this generation, with no practical extenuating circumstances to complicate how we would react. What about this "idea" would change things really? — schopenhauer1
You still need to have money to buy goods and services. — schopenhauer1
Besides likely curtailment of both your earning and the availability of goods: whatever the people you depend on stop doing; whatever the people who want your possessions take; if they're hungry enough, the loss of your pets and your pantry.What exactly changes in your individual life? — schopenhauer1
Nothing new there! Why do you think major religions forbid non-reproductive sex? They've always wanted fresh meat for the congregations, for the army, for the tax-collector, for the factories and fields. Elites need the lowest two or three tiers of society to be the most numerous and least valued, so that they can be kept perpetually at one another's throat, anxious, suspicious, jealous. Fear, loathing and the worship of their betters is what keeps the peons compliant. Even though, in pragmatic terms, they should have backed off that policy a few decades ago, they can't seem to let go of it as a divide-to-conquer political issue.At the end of the day, it is about cultivating and reproducing our workers to ensure our pensions and lifestyles don't go to shit. How lovely we all are to keep this scheme going all these years. — schopenhauer1
The Iroquois word for this ahistorical statement, schop1, is BULLSHIT (same word, btw, in countless other languages over dozens of millennia of countless indigenous peoples):So in the end, if we think of future generations at all, it is just plain old selfish ... — schopenhauer1
Excerpt fromThe Seventh Generation Principle is based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)* philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
You ain't gonna miss your water until your well runs dry ...
a decadent civilization growing morbidly obese from cannibalizing its young (its future) – in the late 20th / early 21st century. In other words, like an old song says — 180 Proof
Kids have been bought and sold, beaten and exploited and browbeaten since long before the industrial age. — Vera Mont
I have not sold, beaten, exploited or browbeaten any of my children, nor have I forced my religion onto them or sent them to die in a pointless war — Srap Tasmaner
I don't know how long that 'always' will be. From my current perspective, it looks like a short future.But those interests are not the whole story, and it is not impossible -- or at least not shown here -- that those interests will not always be decisive. — Srap Tasmaner
Unfortunately, this not the universal practice of humankind, and hasn't been for some 6000 years. — Vera Mont
Some things, yes, I think so. The last couple of generations of super-rich would redouble their efforts to secure an immortality of some kind for themselves - whether as corpsicles or cyborgs or in the matrix or in a vat - they would probably explore all of those technologies to whatever degree their money and influence enable them. This would automatically mean withdrawing funds from political campaigns, long-term investments, sheltered bank accounts, trust funds and charities. — Vera Mont
I imagine the younger ones would splash out some spectacular end-of-the-world parties, and so would many people of lesser means. No more saving for the children's education, family health insurance premiums, term deposits: you can't take it with you and there's nobody to leave it to. Once the last generation of dependent young was out of the nest, the shape of coupling would change - no planning and providing for a family, so why bother with marriage and career? No eager young college graduates nipping at your job, so why not just coast?
Also, the enormous market in baby and child products would implode along with its retail outlets and advertisers; a number of large corporations would be wiped out. Overall, a massive redeployment of capital and an unrecognizably altered economy.
To some extent, the approaching climate doomesday is prompting similar behaviour: a world-wide closing panic, wherein the haves are gobbling up whatever is left of the world as fast as they possibly can and the more ruthless politicians are enabling them. — Vera Mont
With that redeployment of liquid assets, and a concomitant collapse of banks, I imagine a massive surge in unemployment - with an ever-changing profile of the unemployed population when it's joined by military and law-enforcement personnel the governments can't to pay anymore - neglect of infrastructure, fragmentation of power delivery and transportation, cessation of social services... and a huge rise in crime. As long as the rich can afford private armies, the rest of us would have to take what we need from one another, as we increasingly do now, but in a few years, there would be little or nothing left to own.
The small-footprint, self-reliant homesteaders and survivalists might do all right well into old age, if they joined forces. But they wouldn't; the survivalists would raid the homesteads and take their stuff, but no their knowledge. — Vera Mont
Besides likely curtailment of both your earning and the availability of goods: whatever the people you depend on stop doing; whatever the people who want your possessions take; if they're hungry enough, the loss of your pets and your pantry. — Vera Mont
Nothing new there! Why do you think major religions forbid non-reproductive sex? They've always wanted fresh meat for the congregations, for the army, for the tax-collector, for the factories and fields. Elites need the lowest two or three tiers of society to be the most numerous and least valued, so that they can be kept perpetually at one another's throat, anxious, suspicious, jealous. Fear, loathing and the worship of their betters is what keeps the peons compliant. Even though, in pragmatic terms, they should have backed off that policy a few decades ago, they can't seem to let go of it as a divide-to-conquer political issue. — Vera Mont
I suspect PD James took this 'inter-generational principal' seriously and her novel is a speculation that when it breakdowns for whatever reason (IIRC, she doesn't give one and neither does the film) the consequences will be dystopian (e.g. fascist, nihilistic). A cautionary tale about "just plain old selfish" unsustainable, philistine, presentism – a decadent civilization growing morbidly obese from cannibalizing its young (its future) – in the late 20th / early 21st century. In other words, like an old song says
You ain't gonna miss your water until your well runs dry ... — 180 Proof
is wrong, which means we are expected to recognize there is an alternative. I have not sold, beaten, exploited or browbeaten any of my children, nor have I forced my religion onto them or sent them to die in a pointless war. Am I doing it wrong? — Srap Tasmaner
Why would future people being born or not born dictate what the rich would do any more than currently — schopenhauer1
Only that doesn't work. Nothing is equal and nothing is worked out.(all practical things being equal.. as I said, the practical issues are worked out in this scenario as far as the economics). — schopenhauer1
It doesn't. It's not some theoretical 'idea' of children that's being proposed; it's the certainty of no more children. In a matter of one decade, the effect would be altogether too tangible to ignore.Why does the idea of no children really change anything? — schopenhauer1
If it could be isolated as philosophical proposition, I suppose it would more likely divide the world into hedonists and mystics. — Vera Mont
Well, since the genre is, in effect, a Dystopia-Dying Earth hybrid, "individual habits or behavior" are only, even primarily, symptoms of accelerating societal collapse which, of course, included labor-consumer collapse. The Children of Men is a speculative novel, not a psycho-sociological treatise. I applaud the author for dramatizing a shift in perspective from taken-for-granted self-centered immediacy to the loss of existential longtermism. As she said clarifying the central idea of the novel ...The "doomsday" part is from the fact that no people will be around to keep the economy going. But the idea of, "Oh no! What shall I do if there isn't a future generation" doesn't seem to be a factor in our individual habits or behavior. — schopenhauer1
It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice', 'compassion', 'society’, 'struggle', 'evil', would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070526121608/http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/bowman.htm — P.D. James, interview (2007)
What do you mean by this? Do we not have that now? — schopenhauer1
You can't understand. How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. — Heart of Darkness
And as the individual must keep in mind what others will say, so each generation must keep in mind what future generations will say. — Srap Tasmaner
Yep, we cannot forget the reproduction of the consumption side of things- the necessity for more demand. More customers.It would be devastating for society (meaning the economy), not because of a lack of workers, but because of a lack of customers, long before they would have reached the age to join the workforce.
Of course, it would be fantastic for the planet. — LuckyR
Well, since the genre is, in effect, a Dystopia-Dying Earth hybrid, "individual habits or behavior" are only, even primarily, symptoms of accelerating societal collapse which, of course, included labor-consumer collapse. The Children of Men is a speculative novel, not a psycho-sociological treatise. — 180 Proof
It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice', 'compassion', 'society’, 'struggle', 'evil', would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070526121608/http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/bowman.htm — P.D. James, interview (2007)
- Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".[5]
- Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness".[5] The anchoring mechanism provides individuals with a value or an ideal to consistently focus their attention on. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society and stated that "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future"[5] are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.
-Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions".[5] Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.
-Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation. — Wiki
Do people generally live their daily lives because of future generations? — schopenhauer1
Their behaviour is influenced, too: they drive more carefully, take fewer risks, drink less, try not to swear or set a bad example; hide their less laudable actions and fear their children's censure.
Not all parents, of course, but I think the majority do, to whatever extent their social position permits. — Vera Mont
People wouldn't save or make plans for a future child, — schopenhauer1
Some people, yes. They can become quite obsessed with procreation.but would that put someone in existential despair — schopenhauer1
Desires thwarted account for a very great deal of human despair, mental illness, homicide and suicide.It's simply a desire thwarted. — schopenhauer1
They do so! I've witnessed it close up, young couples laying elaborate plans for the babies they intended to produce. — Vera Mont
Some people, yes. They can become quite obsessed with procreation — Vera Mont
Desires thwarted account for a very great deal of human despair, mental illness, homicide and suicide. — Vera Mont
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