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[maddict]

We have digital recording on the television sets at my parents' place, so I've been watching a lot recorded episodes of Man vs. Wild with Bear Gryllis. My family also got together recently to watch Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch and directed by Sean Penn. Combine the financial success of these two entertainments with a show like Lost or a

Comments

[indubitablydyl]

I'm reminded of an essay by Sam Harris called "Mother Nature is Not Our Friend" where he talks about his changing notions of Nature as benevolent to Nature as callously indifferent. http://richarddawkins.net/article,2096,Mother-Nature-is-Not-Our-Friend,Sam-Harris . I think there is a current, and has been since at least Romanticism/Trascendentalism (in America, anyway; Luddites in Britain, etc) of anti-technology/industry/whatever survivalism. But I also think a lot of people want it to be true that technological progress is negative moreso than logically reason it to be true (Thoreau and Emerson certainly did). Tech-progress certainly speeds things up, but I doubt I'd be any less stressed if all I had was harvests and livestock

[maddict]

I guess, on this political anthropology analysis, Iron Man would be like propaganda that reinforces our faith in the system that produces the film. No doubt that it's more successful; just like you'll see a scientist lobbying for more scientist education in grade school being taken more seriously on the Senate floor than someone arguing for, say, survival training in the classroom. Although I suppose Creationists and Boy Scouts do have more formidable clout