Keeping Hope – A Short Film by Kushal Vaghani

Keeping Hope – A Short Film by Kushal Vaghani

Keeping Hope by Kushal Vaghani is a silent short showing how powerful emotional connections within a family can be. Simone is crying on her father’s deathbed along with her mum. Holding her father’s palm, she recollects her childhood memories and the emotional connection with her family. Suddenly death approaches the father and Simone tries to convince death not to take the father. However, death is not perturbed by Simone’s insistence. Simone then holds the hands of her father and mother, as they(family) did during the childhood, and this emotional human connection humbles...
The Movie Prometheus Meets Hurricane Sandy

The Movie Prometheus Meets Hurricane Sandy

The recent hurricane causing havoc in New Jersey, New York and the rest of the East Coast of the US generated significant media interest, and also ignited discussions about human responsibility, direct or indirect involvement in natural catastrophes and weather pattern changes. The relatively recently released film Prometheus also tries to find answers to questions on the relationship in between humanity and the natural environment. Is it possible to draw conclusions, parallels between the two? The Movie: Prometheus In the film Prometheus a group of scientists, bankrolled by a dying billionaire trying to find answers to eternity, trace the origins of prototype humanoids to a faraway planet, which was identified from thousands of years old cave wall paintings from many different cultures. The scientists suspect that these prototype humanoids “engineered” the present humanity, and are anxious to meet them to get answers to questions like “What is the purpose of life?” “How can we make life better?” and so on. As they arrive to the suspected location they truly find a base where the prototype humanoids are stationed, but they find that almost all died with signs of a horrible and violent death. They also find huge quantities of a biological weapons, used to colonize planets by wiping them clean first and then terraforming on them later. But what comes to light is that the biological weapon as a result of accident was released on themselves causing their violent demise. There are also signs that before their unexpected end the prototype humanoids were ready to head for the Earth again, planning to wipe it clean and start again. Indeed as soon...
Alan Watts – A Conversation With Myself [Video]

Alan Watts – A Conversation With Myself [Video]

Alan Watts muses on the difference between the world of nature and the world of man. The following are some quotes from the video: There seems to be a complete difference of style between the things that human beings do and the things that nature does, even though human beings are themselves part of nature There is an interdependence of flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees there are no flowers. They’re really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else. So it’s interconnected! And so the many many patterns of interconnections lock it in together into a unity, which is, however, much too complicated for us to think about Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does only because everything around it does Everything we’re doing to try to improve the world was a success in the short run, made amazing initial improvements, but in the long run we seem to be destroying the planet by our very efforts to control it and improve it When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way. In other words there’s something wrong with the way we think. And while that is there, everything we do will be a...
Waking Up – An Open Source Film

Waking Up – An Open Source Film

Woman: There are a lot of things I haven’t told you about our world, but we don’t use money anymore in this culture, on this planet. Man: You don’t use money? Woman: No Man: So you could have anything you want? Woman: Well, yes, but we don’t want more than we need. It works pretty much the same way as your old libraries used to work, except that we can keep whatever we want or need as long as we need it. Don’t worry. You’re going to love the future. We’re one big family on this planet now! The above script is taken from the video below, which acts as a short film that may or may not appear in the final version of the movie Waking Up. Watch Waking Up Forest Scene Waking Up forest scene from Harald Sandø on Vimeo. About Waking Up Waking Up is a open source film about a positive future for humanity, for a change. The film is in the making by several people, and you can contribute to the writing of it on wakingupmovie.com. Visit the site for more info on this...
3 Ways The Environment Shapes Human Behavior

3 Ways The Environment Shapes Human Behavior

Many scientific researches have shown an obvious fact, that the behavior of a human being is created by the environment. If genes predispose a certain behavior but the environment doesn’t support it, then that behavior won’t manifest, so in this case, genes aren’t important.” – TROM Narrator The section ENVIRONMENT in the documentary TROM (The Reality Of Me) shows how the environment shapes human beings’ behaviors via: Scientists’ explanations of their research, Scenes of how certain behaviors become accepted as norms in different cultures and situations.   Watch ENVIRONMENT From TROM   How The Environment Shapes Human Behavior. Example 1: Your Experiences Can Change Your Neural Connections Dr. Gregory Forbes, recorded at TEDGlobal 2010: We live in a remarkable time the age of genomics. Your genome is the entire sequence of your DNA. Your sequence and mine are slightly different. That’s why we look different. I’ve got brown eyes you might have blue, or gray; but it’s not just skin-deep. The headlines tell us that genes can give us scary diseases, maybe even shape our personality, or give us mental disorders. Our genes seem to have awesome power over our destinies, and yet, I would like to think that I am more than my genes. Likewise, every connectome changes over time. What kind of changes happen? Neurons, like trees, can grow new branches, and then can lose old ones. Synapses can be created, and then can be eliminated; And synapses can grow larger, and they can grow smaller. 2nd question: What causes these changes? It’s true; to some extent, they are programmed by your genes. But that’s not the whole story, because there...