While I don’t watch nearly as many movies as I used to, but on the recommendation of a podcast, I watched the movie Harrison Bergeron. Now, you’ll find it interesting that this movie isn’t available on Amazon, Netflix, or even anywhere for sale. It’s unusual that I even talk about movies in my blog, but this movie was rather striking. Now, it was done in 1995, and the special effects were pretty humorous. It’s based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut.
It’s a rather scary tale, mostly because it paints the picture of the path we are heading down. The premise is that everyone is not created equal, but it’s the government’s job to make everyone equal. That means everyone is average. Smart people are dumbed down, dumb people are brought up. One of the lines (and I’m paraphrasing here), has a teacher talking about history, they talk about the period after the cold war as “The Great Recession”. Why was it different than any other recession? because it never ended. Due to technology, not as many jobs were needed, leading to mass unemployment, and ultimately the third civil war.
Does that sound familiar? think of the hype of putting electronic kiosks into fast food restaurants. Is that technology replacing unskilled labor? isn’t that exactly what is happening in our world? Well, if you happen to have 90 minutes to spare, check out YouTube, it’s the only place to find this movie.
Thanks for reading,
Mike