The movie, “Surviving Progress,” is released on April 6, 2012. The directors are Harold Crooks and Mathieu Roy. In the film, director Crooks and Roy identity the distinction between good and bad progress. Progress in the human society is change, improvements, and moving forwards toward a better life. Even though people have difference meanings of the word: progress, there are enough evidences such as overpopulation, pollution, and national debts to prove that there are good and bad progress.
The progress traps, according to the directors, are “improvements, which leads to disasters.” The speaker states that progress traps are bad progress, which result in unseen failures in the future and is influenced by human behaviors. Who would’ve thought that the outcome of too much improvements, too much progress, or too much changes are just “short term successes.” For example, the population in the world is increasing year after year. According to the film, the population in the world is around 6-7 billion. The speaker suggests that if everyone lives comfortably in the world, ideally, the population should be around 3-4 billion. Surprisingly enough, as the speaker indicates, “we are overpopulated.” We are making too much progress in term of the world population. Next, natural capital is another example to demonstrate the what progress trap is. We are consuming more than the natural is able to produce. If we continue to do what we are doing now, the world is going to die faster because natural resources are running out quicker. Lastly, the global financial system reveals financial crisis in the world. Since the invention of credit cards, more and more people have “debts that are more than they can pay.” Even most countries are in a huge debt including the U.S.
The world is running toward disaster because of too much progress, Day by day, the natural resources is decreasing, Year by year, people have more debts to pay. Can we take control of our on destiny? Can we prove that the nature is wrong? Can we take care of our on civilization? Interestingly enough, the speaker has faith in the human brain, which he calls it the “planetary brain.” The speaker is optimistic because he believes that the human brain contains unique knowledge and is capable of solving problem to change the world.