#8 – The End

A popular theme to explore in science fiction media is the apocalypse, or surviving in a world that has been ravaged or otherwise destroyed. While the appeal of this scenario is to imagine one’s own self surviving in such a desolate world or watching someone else do it for them, not many films delve deep into the reasoning of why the world ended to begin with.

Noam Chomsky, in the 284th episode of Jung and Naiv, spoke at length about the state of the world and how humans are driving each other and the planet towards an unfortunate fate — and how the most powerful country in the world’s leaders do nothing to stop it, even going as far as saying that nothing is happening. Chomsky brings up excellent points about how refugees and people in lesser developed countries struggle to survive and how the rest of the world wouldn’t understand or care, and later goes into how the president of the United States is a terrorist along with those that support him. All of these scenarios, left unchecked, could easily lead into something like a nuclear war; even if not, because of the lack of action taken by anyone in a position of power, humans also will be the cause of the planet becoming uninhabitable as well. Things such as the massive consumption of fossil fuel and other nonrenewable resources – they harm the planet and there’s not enough being done to stop it.

All of these lead into apocalyptic scenarios, but more importantly, they lead into apocalyptic scenarios as a cause of human action (or inaction, for the environmental disaster route). In the movie Soylent Green, the setting is a post-apocalyptic world after the effects of overpopulation and pollution have taken hold, and only the richest of people can afford decent housing. There is only one company that controls the food supply of most of the world, which is Soylent Industries, and that gives them all the power even as starving people riot and are shot down. At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Soylent Green, the newest product from Soylent Industries that claims to be healthy and made of ocean plankton, yet was in incredibly short supply, is actually instead made from human corpses. The ocean is revealed to no longer be able to produce plankton, and as such the only possible source of protein is other humans.

In a scenario like that, the world has been thoroughly ruined by humans, yet is still continued to be controlled by large corporations. It’s similar to what Noam Chomsky said in the interview – in today’s world, the government ignores environmental issues and actively seeks to destroy those who disagree with them, telling its citizens that those who disagree are the enemy… and people agree. It’s a scary thought, because having an “us vs them” mentality leads to more strife and conflict, but not enough people are doing anything to stop it. Maybe it’s due to lack of awareness, but that’s why Chomsky writes books and goes around giving speeches on activism – so that more people will think critically of the world.

And if more people do that, then perhaps we can avoid living in a situation like Soylent Green and won’t have to resort to eating protein harvested from human corpses.

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Fleischer, Richard, director. Soylent Green. 1973.

Tilo Jung. “Noam Chomsky: The Alien perspective on humanity – Jung & Naiv: Episode 284.” YouTube, 23 Oct. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0qdbsE3Jqo.