Bored? Just think…

Today I watched The Dark Knight with my friends, just to hang out with them. However it ended up being much more involved than I had expected. This movie was very entertaining, due to the fights, shootings, explosions, and all that good stuff that us guys enjoy. However, it was even more entertaining on an intellectual level. It, interestingly, pointed out some of the ideas that would lead to what I was hoping to write about today anyway… our society and human nature.
Now I’m going to put something out there so don’t become intimidated or get angry immediately and call me an idiot, just give me a chance to explain my case. Our society, and us as human beings, are degenerating. We are reverting back towards our animalistic instincts rather than progressing and becoming dignified individuals. We are losing our morals and our standards. Honestly, there are times when I think that the animals are more organized and efficient than we are. The major component of this is selfishness.

A good example that my father brought up illustrates this very nicely. Squirrels in Russia, are always on the move. They live in, for example, a tree for a while, leave it, and move into another tree that was occupied by another pack, which moved into another tree, and so on. Each pack, collects food and leaves it in the tree for the next pack. When the new pack gets there, they eat it while they try to find where the food sources are. They collect more food, after they find where it’s located, fill up the tree and move out, leaving it for the next pack.

Now whether or not this is true or not isn’t the question. But, it is certainly possible and there are many notable cases of animals acting selflessly. This is what our society needs to strive for. We need to act as a one large conglomerate unit rather than a countless number of little pieces working for their own share. The idea might seem Communistic, which it probably is, but I believe in it.

Anyway, to relate all this to the movie, I have two examples : one example shows our flaws as humans and the other shows our strengths. WARNING! This may contain spoilers so please read with caution.

At the start of the movie, a group of bank robbers in clown masks are in a car driving to a bank that they are going to withdraw some money from… to say the least. On the way they remarked upon how they are going to have to divide it six ways, for the six people. During the heist, a robber kills one of his partners. Another robber kills another one of his partners. And they all end up killing each other except for one guy who remains, the Joker. He takes all the money and leaves.

The second example occurs towards the end. There are two groups of people on two different boats. One group on one boat is composed of maybe four hundred convicts under the supervision of police. The other group is composed of four hundred civilians, plain common everyday street-folk. Both of these boats stop working in the middle of a bay. The joker contacts them, tells them that they each have a remote detonator that sets off a bomb that will explode the other group’s boat. They have until midnight, which is when the Joker himself will blow up both boats, unless one of them is already blown up. They have no contact with each other and they can’t leave the boat. Amazingly, neither group presses their button.

Now, this IS just a movie but they played it out very powerfully. The civilians are trying to justify their decision to blow up the other boat because they are convicts and have ruined their reputation, thus deserving it. Five minutes before midnight, one of the convicts moves up to the police officer holding the detonator. With a concerned look on his face he demands that the police officer hand him the detonator so that he may do “what they should’ve done ten minutes ago.” The police officer reluctantly hands him the detonator, and the convict tosses it out the window. On the civilians side, no one could bring themselves to detonate it, although they decided they should.

We need to as a society move away from the first example and continue striving for the second. For all those people knew, that button could’ve detonated their own boat; they would’ve been trusting the Joker, a criminal.

I was very fond of the Joker character and Heath Ledger played him excellently, from the constant licking and smacking of his lips to his insane and shrilling laugh. I doubt I would have been able to enjoy the movie as much as I did without the small details that he included and how well he demonstrated the concepts described earlier.