In the course I recently took on Medieval History, it seemed to me that a big factor of the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the Empire's one party system and the resultant difficulty with the transfer of power. During the civil wars that followed the deaths of effective emperors, the Barbarian invasions raged out of control. Because that one party system may have been key to that Empire's downfall, I think that partisanship is to some extent necessary to our democracy. That said, we should recognize that the party lines are really the arbitrary results of power brokering, so there's no reason why democrats and republicans can't agree on something like a Global Warming policy.

I think Corporations are a big part of the problem, because they have no long term responsibility. They're only responsible year-to-year, and only to their shareholders. We have to recognize that this entrenched power structure did not exist and that we need more responsible businesses if human kind is going to continue existing for the next century. Perhaps "The Corporation" and "An Inconvenient Truth" should be required viewing in schools, along with "Why We Fight", eh? How can we change if so many of our citizens are unaware of the shape of the hegemony we exist in?

Ebert: I believe lead poisoning also contributed to the death of the Roman ruling class, as various caesars explained it "needs more study."

If you are a member of the U.S. Congress, you should not give a damn if you are a Democrat or a Republican. You should discard ideology and partisanship. You should be searching only for what works, or gives promise of working. You should be listening to the best counsel of the wisest people you can find. This is no time for playing to the crowd. That is all over with. This is the hour to seek what might lead us back from the brink.

Well said, Mr. Ebert. You are truly a great writer and this was one of the most touching blogs I have read on the Internet for a while.

I am afraid what's happening right now... and I'm even more afraid what's going to happen in the future. The Israel-Palestine conflict is so devastating, and I dread to think what India will do if Pakistan tries to attack (it's already deployed its troops, yippee!).

I'm just as pessimistic as you. I am not sure if Obama can save America or at least make it better. I think it will get WORSE before it gets better...

Regarding your opening paragraph, I think the 21st century might belong to the WORLD, and not to the Americans.

Hey don't be so down! There's a chance that there may be nothing to worry about. There's also a chance that there's perhaps actually a whole heck of a lot to worry about, but that we can't do anything about it. Watched Deliverance last night, and specifically the ending is rather striking in that so long as we stay together, stay connected, we shouldn't have too much reason to fear, in contrast to the risk of being out on your own.

Ebert: I had never before thought of "Deliverance" as inspirational.

I have 5 acres in the country and a tractor. Also of course, some guns, but just for hunting when necessary.

"Well, Master, we're in a fix and no mistake," is what I remember Sam saying to Frodo on the way to the Crack of Doom. But, Roger, I am hopeful that what we are witnessing is not death, but childbirth--traumatic, revolutionary, but yielding something new, that may be viable, and may be improving.

Rex Stout had his Nero Wolfe insist that Archie read a book entitled (if memory serves) World Peace through World Government. Enough slapdowns by what doesn't work, and perhaps the prescience of Stout (reportedly possessed of an IQ of 185, for what that's worth) might become manifest.

But, meanwhile, we all gotta do what we gotta do, and survival of the fittest, nowadays, involves uniting and pulling together. Thanks for the blast of Harsh Truth--I hope it opens many eyes.

Ebert: From Sam to Falstaff:

We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.

I cannot help but believe that our institutions, belief systems and general way of life are ultmately our downfall. How can we continue to live as we do, believing that we should consume at will with ever increasing expectations with only our individual self interest at heart without regard for the world around us. And how can we survive as a species with the tribalistic provincial attitudes that shape our behavior towards one another.

Without a deep examination of our core values with regards to understanding what our fundamental needs really are and our place within the world and the universe we are on the path of steady decline.

My beautiful friend Roger,

Thank you, as a public figure, for being honest and soberminded in your perceptions of the 'weather' that is our current context. Without meaning this in a preachy way at all though, while I respect the need to distinguish your comments to 'not in a Biblical sense', I must say that there is certainly a vortex of paradox and problems and rich meaning that pits us front and center with religious, moral, perhaps even 'theological' questions. I pull away quickly from just about anything you can find in pop-Christianity or pop-etc. of any other persuasion that is offered, but I must find solace and understanding deeply in the heart of the visions and persuasions of Augustine of Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, Aquinas, Tolstoy, Karl Barth, Paul, Peter, John. The best I can sum up is that somehow and someway, in no manner easily elucidated or expressed (the last book of the bible is a genre that is more mysterious and subtle than of which we even have today) this world now is all encompassed and summed up in death and resurrection. The death and resurrection of the Christ is played out now in the annals of human history. Profoundest love and joy and peace and rest is only possible through the harshest of pain, suffering, sadness, grief and especially perhaps doubt (I absolutely loved your review by the way). I know you are no stranger to this view of the world from your upbringing and I certainly mean to be in no way preachy, yet I am helplessly drawn in my thoughts to some of the deepest issues in my mind from reading your sobering and honest article.

“Therefore if I die – but I die no more – and some one finds my skull, let this skull still preach to him, saying, I have no eyes, yet I behold Him; I have neither brain nor understanding, yet I comprehend him; I have no lips, yet I kiss Him; I have no tongue, yet I praise Him with you all, who call upon His name. I am a hard skull, yet am I quite softened and melted in his love; I lie outside here in the churchyard, yet am I within in Paradise! All suffering is forgotten. That hath his great love done for us, since for us He bore his Cross and went forth unto Golgotha.”

-- Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrugge
"Passionspredigten"

Not to sound like a hippie, but it's all the negative thinking that keeps the economy down.

Scaring people into their homes, out of the malls, theatres and sports arenas does nothing but stop the flow of cash. Words of a bad economy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm not saying that people not buying the newest iPod was the only reason. It's rough in America right now, but most of that which caused it was beyond the common man's control.

Canada's future is sounding much like America many months ago.

Times are rough, I agree, but it isn't the Great Depression. No one is in line for a loaf of bread to split amongst their family. People are educated and capable of more than ever before.

Best thing to remember is: The economy is cyclical. Things will get better. You didn't think we could reach the greatest highs ever without being brought right back down to reality?

Let's all just cheer up, go watch a movie and eat some over-priced popcorn. Things will get better. They have to.

A particular timely piece, since I just viewed "WALL-E" last evening. Of all the Pixar films, I think this one is the most meaningful. My fear, though, is that many children that see "WALL-E" will think that the life on that spaceship is something to aspire to. I was also reminded of "Soylent Green," when Edward G. Robinson shows Charlton Heston a movie of what Earth was like in Robinson's youth, and Heston responds, "I didn't know it was so beautiful." I sincerely hope your concerns and the visions of those two films are not as prescient as I believe they may be.

That was rather alarmist.

But isn't there always some who believe that their generation has seen the worst of it, that despite 10,000 years of progress in human society, TOMORROW is when it all starts going to hell in a handbasket?

I can understand why Americans, in particular, have so little to be optimistic about, given that all the things you took for granted--your rock solid economy, your awesome military power, your unrivaled technical prowess--have all been badly eroded by the unending forces of change. But just because America is no longer the force it once was, and because hatred and apathy continue to thrive in some parts of the world, doesn't mean that all is lost for humanity just yet.

Things will be different, and people may not get quite the free ride that westerners, and Americans in particular, got after WW2, but the likely hardship that many westerners, and Americans in particular, are facing now are nothing compared to what most of the world has endured, and continues to endure, for most of human history. Indian and Pakistan have played this game before, and before them the US and Russia, and always cooler heads have prevailed. I see no reason to abandon hope this time. Other conflicts are far more localized and have far less potential to affect the general quality of life and well being of the world populace. Israel and Palestine will continue their little struggle ad infinitum but with no real change, Africans will continue perpetrate atrocities on each other, and, basically, humans will go on being human, but this is nothing new. Nothing that hasn't marked human history for thousands of years. The only thing different, I suppose, is that many of the conflicts will likely drag out longer because neither side will be allowed to commit genocide on the other, but I hope I'm forgiven if I see that as a sign of some small amount of progress.

Yes, the weather is screwy, but it's unlikely to wipe out humanity. Most likely we will run out of fossil fuels before we unleash enough pollution to irrevocably harm the Earth anyways. What people need to learn to accept is just how much of our lifestyles we owe to oil, and just how much our lifestyles are going to change when it's gone. This doesn't have to be such a tragic thing. People are perfectly capable of being happy without living in a 14 room house with a swimming pool and a fully occupied three car garage. Americans crying about the End of Times remind me of the old adage about how a baby that never sees the candy is much happier than the baby that has it briefly, but then has it snatched away.

This is what people will have to become accustomed to: car ownership for city dwellers is frivolous and wasteful. If you need a car, you are being unnecessarily wasteful. If you absolutely require a car to commute to your job, that means your job is too far from your house. Move, or get a new job.

Which brings me to my next point: house ownership is frivolous and wasteful. In any Asian country, 5000 people live in an apartment block that takes up the same amount of land area as 16 houses in the average American suburb. Surprisingly, those people are not overly depressed and do not spend much time contemplating the end of life as we know it. They seem quite well adjusted. They take the bus or the subway to work; their commute is probably much quicker on average. For shopping or other errands that would normally require a car, you can take a taxi. They are actually quite inexpensive and convenient when there are enough of them competing with each other.

Finally, health care in America sucks and everybody knows it. It doesn't have to be that way; Americans spend, what, twice as much per capita as most developed countries, and yet are something like 20th or worse on most health quality indicators? Americans could be doing much much better in that regard, but probably won't until someone realises that health care professionals in America don't have any incentive to cure or prevent illness; they only have incentive to treat it. Until someone in America figures out the solution to that little conundrum, I'm sure most people will continue getting bankrupted by every major illness that strikes a family.

Anyways, as a member of the younger generation, I forgive you, the baby boomers, your excesses. You don't have to apologise to me. Your parents earned it, after WW2, and what better reward could the greatest generation ask for than a life of luxury for their children? I don't begrudge you that. And don't worry too much about us; we have 10,000 years of continual progress for momentum. Yes, of course there have been setbacks before; even in the previous century, but humanity has muddled through and always came out better off eventually. I expect our generation has a hard job of work before us; but hopefully, when it's all said and done, we'll have earned some respite for our children. Maybe they'll even be a little wiser, and not blow it all in a single half- century.

Mr. Ebert, you posted an exceedingly positive blog days after the election was won by Barack Obama. Why such despair now?

Ebert: My man has his work cut out for him.

"No Country For Old Men" seems to have completely different meanings to me as time goes on. I keep thinking of the line "You can't stop what's coming." It just gives me a hollow, remorseful feeling. A great article by a great writer.

Relax.

When I was a young journalist, I asked a colleague, "What do they mean when they say we're heading toward a service economy?" He said, "That means that sooner or later the entire U.S. GNP will be based on us delivering pizzas to one another." I think of him whenever I buy another Apple product, all of which come in a box reading, "Designed in California. Made in China." An expensive pizza, but the same idea.

But what that means is, we can't be fearful. Or too fearful, anyway. If we hunker down too much, we drag the rest of the economy into the hole we've taken shelter in. To some extent, we have to stand up straight, dress for dinner, eat at restaurants once in a while and behave like Londoners during the Blitz. Thomas W is right: We're all in the same boat, and the boat may be leaky, but we have company. Hard times are hard times, but they tend to spawn great art. I would rather stay in the city, jackals and all, than run off to some acreage with guns and paranoia.

That said, I think putting a few bank executives before a firing squad would be an excellent first-day-in-office activity for the new president. They can buy their lives by giving their bonuses back. Morale would soar. Productivity would cough back to life. And what an interesting country we would live in, once again.

Ebert: shooting them is far too harsh. Why not 10-to-life working as bank tellers?

How ironic that you don't have guts to mention the bloodbath in Gaza, that is going on as we write these lines. There are protests all over the world against it. Here in Vienna, even Jewish groups are organizing protests against the Israeli policies. There is no other issue more responsible for the state of affairs we find ourselves in as Palestine tragedy. The solution is simple, just give them their state. But is it ever going to be done if even people of great authority and respect don't have guts to talk about it in a blog?

Ebert: The last thing I wanted to do was start up a discussion about any specific situation. (I agree with you, by the way. There is already a de facto Palestine. Why not acknowledge it?)

Mr Ebert I believe that just as age can bring you wisdom it also brings you a degree of melancoly, to paraphrase a great television show "Every generation thinks the next one is going to f%^&k everything up." Although I am young, and of this generation I tend to lean towards this dispair. But, in my mere 24 years I have seen the world live through many a natural crisis, some war, recessions, ect. I wouldn't want to knock you by calling global warming Al's fantasy, but a huge number of scientist disagree on the doomsday scenario. Cheer up a bit, we may discover yet that you don't fall off the world when you reach the edge, although I think many people would like it better if we did. I work for a news agency and "If it bleeds it leads" Has been replace with "If it gets abnormally hot it leads." We make a living on fear remember? Some days I feel like a regular Wes Craven, except at least our stuff is "Based on a true story." Whatever that means.

Ebert: Let me guess. You work for the AP, and have been ordered to "own" a Celeb, and be the first one to break ANY story on that Media Creature, and you will hear plenty about it if you don't. How is my intuition?

Ah, plumbum, a delicious irony that lead was originally named for its use in plumbing! :D It's a good thing I used the indefinite article instead of the definite, cleverly allowing for other explanations of the fall.

Goodness, you have fallen into an existential funk. All these things may be true, but there is really so much good in the world. I believe that when things get bad, people have a chance to show their best qualities. Some things may fall apart, but new, stronger things will take their place. I am too young (40) and have young children too have such a pessimistic outlook about the future.

I will draw on ol' W.B. as well and paraphrase:
This is no WORLD for old men...
I live on the edge of our nation, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When you try to exist on a quarter mile sand bar you are at the mercy of the sea and weather in a way many can't comprehend. The sea is changing. I do not require "further study" to verify this. I observe it each day. The argument for and against amuses me. It is rather like watching people argue about the existence of oxygen. So, what can we do you and I? Try to be good stewards of the land. We do not own it, no matter what our deeds say. Make good choices when we excercise our privilege to vote (look around the world, it is not a birthright). Support good causes with our time and money. Read Yeats, listen to the Beatles, watch good films. Keep a sense of humor, or at least bemusement. Be well.

Ebert: John Prine:

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an' find Jesus on your own

Knowing John a little, I believe the emphasis in the last line is on the final three words.

I have faith, sir.

Not in God, mind you, or any multi-denominational equivalent.

I have faith in science. I have faith in human ingenuity, particularly when it is sparked by immediate necessity. I have faith in the strength of will shown by like-minded individuals who share the goal of saving our species.

But mostly, I have faith in the all-consuming power of human self-interest. In the end, it will be that most enduring of mortal sins that will pull us out of the fire. Why do I think cold fusion will be discovered soon? Because there's money in it. Why do I think cures for cancer and AIDS and Alzheimer's and dozens of other diseases are imminent? Because there's money in it.

Why do I think the ruling class will find a way to fix this mess, restore a semblance of order to the world economy, and pull a gigantic 'Get Out of Global Warming Free' card out of their butts?

Ebert: Well, at least your optimism doesn't depend on optimism.

Because their money is in it.

Addendum:
...or we could join JR in Texas. But I would probably bring my own gun.

You asked what has been in my mind for...how long has it been? I don't know, all I know are the questions. Why did I inherit a world with no security?

But I believe, looking at history and my past, whatever happens will work itself out. The center may not hold, but once it breaks apart it will realign itself for a while and then break up again. I do believe that change is the natural order of everything, good and bad.

That doesn't mean we, I speak about the American nation, can't do something to make the change good.

I used to think some global-level catastrophe that didn't quite kill us would be a wake-up call. But isn't there too much corporate power, too little sense of community, too much deep-seated contempt of the "other," and too little intellectual open-mindedness for wake-up calls to work now? The last few months seem proof they won't.

I watched "City of God" last night for the first time. A tremendous film with an utterly depressing message. I don't know if a film, in its closing shot, has ever made me feel more hopeless. The rapid disintegration of human emotional connection and the infectious and escalating nature of violence that occurs over the course of only a few decades in the film, it's all presented in a pattern that is too easy to trace around our real world today. I logged into your website to access your archived review of the film, thinking you may have discovered an underlying message of hope somewhere (anywhere) in "City of God". But I was sidetracked by this cheery blog item.

You're a big help. Thanks.

Didn't some wise man say, "For the love of money is the root of all evil"?

Also translated as "a root of all kinds of evil" in some Bibles. I am not Christian, but I have religious faith and it seems today that truly "Greed hath made captive all mankind: Where are the embodiments of detachment..."

This year we have seen greed taking our nation down--from the banks to the car companies to a man with a great Ponzi scheme.

To hear that Madoff targeted charities is heartbreaking. How shallow and callous can one man be?

There are people who saw this disaster coming, people who wondered about so many things like energy, self-sufficiency and American arrogance. What the Amish have besides self-sufficiency is high moral standards and an understanding and respect for the land. Most farmers know that the land has needs that we cannot ignore.

Drought in Southern California hasn't brought about the kind of conservation measure one would expect. Neither has the constant threat of oil shock or even the end of oil brought the kind of measure in the U.S. that we've need to take for years such as EVs or bullet trains or really good mass transit systems.

Movies like "An Inconvenient Truth," "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" should be required viewing.

I was amazed at how people working for Enron didn't care what happening in California and how they laughed at their involvement in the energy crisis. If this is how Americans treat other Americans, how can we expect other nations to care about us or how can other nations expect us to really care for them?

We've known for years about the problems with gas, cars and transportation. We've been exporting jobs to poor countries to take advantage of their lax environmental laws, workers compensation and poverty. Outsourcing may save money for American companies but how will that save Americans during an economic crisis and are we really helping those other countries?

And how is it that Americans do not have national health care? I had hoped with the Clintons it would come and it did not. As a child whose family was plunged into poverty when my father became terminally ill and as an adult who has been seriously injured twice in the last five years, I know that it IS true. Every American is only one major illness away from poverty.

In this Internet age, we cannot continue on as every person for his/herself. I often think of the words of John Donne (d. 1631):

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent...

And here we are, in a world where an email can travel across the world and yet some people cannot find the heart to care for someone next-door, in the next state or in the next country.

How sad is that? I don't believe that greed for money (as opposed to greed for knowledge) can bring anything but injustice in the world and there will be no peace with injustice.

It seems that many businesses in America are being run on equations that worked during the times of Manifest Destiny or even further back in time, when the world was so small that even thinking of oneness with the European continent was noteworthy.

Yet perhaps this is an opportunity to re-create the world and that is the hope that I will face the new year with.

I still have Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction" on my regular playlist, and I find it somewhat reassuring that we have survived the 43 years since that record's popularity. Barry's specific concerns seem remote by now. It makes me a little less gloomy than you, Roger. I am hopeful that America will follow in the footsteps of the British Empire, easing into a lesser role on the world stage, suffering some hardship but no stark cataclysm.

You're still sharp as ever, Mr. Ebert. Love reading these blogs, even if they do reinforce my deepest fears and reaffirm my staunchest political beliefs concerning corporate greed and the reality of global warming.

I think it's honestly at the point where individual civic action is useless and the only way to affect change is by advancing large social movements dedicated to specific goals.

I remember seeing CHILDREN OF MEN and having a terrible feeling I was watching humanity's future. I purchased the film on DVD and tried to watch it again, but it upsets me too much because that sinking feeling that I try to push aside comes to the surface - that feeling that humanity is about to enter another dark age. In the grand scheme of things, the time is about right. It's hard to stay optimistic for more than a short period of time. We put our hopes in the future, and sometimes an individual like Obama becomes the face of that future, but in the end, we're a giant snowball tumbling down the hill of chaos. The inevitable destruction of our snowball is eminent.

I more often than not have a perpetual hope for humanity, but I think sometimes the snowball needs to be destroyed so we can start over. I think that time may be very soon upon us.

Thanks for writing, Roger. I think I've read everything you've written for at least the past 15 years, and I always look forward to your next blog entry.

Every Generation, especially the elder set, believes it faced the end of the world. I just don't see it. Currently, the unemployment rate is about 6.5%. From 1975-1986 it averaged 7.6%. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

We're just not all gonna die.

I remember seeing CHILDREN OF MEN and having a terrible feeling I was watching humanity's future. I purchased the film on DVD and tried to watch it again, but it upsets me too much because that sinking feeling that I try to push aside comes to the surface - that feeling that humanity is about to enter another dark age. In the grand scheme of things, the time is about right. It's hard to stay optimistic for more than a short period of time. We put our hopes in the future, and sometimes an individual like Obama becomes the face of that future, but in the end, we're a giant snowball tumbling down the hill of chaos. The inevitable destruction of our snowball is eminent.

I more often than not have a perpetual hope for humanity, but I think sometimes the snowball needs to be destroyed so we can start over. I think that time may be very soon upon us.

Thanks for writing, Roger. I think I've read everything you've written for at least the past 15 years, and I always look forward to your next blog entry.

Ebert: It is remarkable how many writers in this thread all evoke the same movie, "Children of Men." And so far I have seen no other movies mentioned. It seems to be one of the rare ones to strike a lasting chord.

I agree with your sentiments, but I wonder how much media and the access to media has skewed perception?

In the past 10 years, with the explosion of cable TV, satellite TV, satellite radio, and especially the internet, people can get news 24/7/365. People are inundated with stories. When something happens on the other side of the world everyone finds out about it immediately, and if a story catches any public attention then it immediately spreads, with every news outlet attempting to scoop all the others. And this happens on an almost hourly basis.

20+ years ago most people would get their news from either local TV newscasts or the newspaper, both of which a)had time to give a story some perspective before publishing/reporting and b)had fixed limitations, either time or pages, to tell all the news of the day. As a result, many things went unreported simply due to the constraints imposed by the delivery method. My point is that perhaps there have been frequent periods when the world went "to hell in a hand basket", but people were blissfully ignorant of the fact.

This isn't to say we should ignore the issues of the current world. More to say that we need to be wary of becoming overwhelmed. One person cannot solve the world's issues, be they an Ethiopian peasant or Barack Obama. If everyone were to make their own little part of the world a little bit better, then that all all anyone can ask.

Truly, Happy New Year to you Roger.
(and what every happened to those wonderful New Years Eve celebrations like I used to see on TV growing up; the ones with Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians at the Waldorf Astoria with the champaign, balloons, and Auld Lang Syne at midnight?)

Ebert: Why doesn't a cable station re-run Guy Lombardo on New Year's Eve? After all it's the same damn countdown every year. The last thing I need is CNN treating it as breaking news. And who gives a flying fish about live shots of the Eve creeping westward through in Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Iceland? The Waldorf Astoria is plenty far away enough for me. And on all but EST, you can get to bed a little earlier.

I've been thinking along these depressing lines since 1999, actually. Mostly because of Y2K, since I never knew a software project to be finished perfectly and on time. But that wasn't a total disaster (though it didn't go as smoothly as we were led to believe, either).

This is scary thinking but I'm afraid it's becoming more realistic, not less. When people whose intelligence I respect start thinking this way too, it gets even scarier.

On one hand, things seem to be getting steadily worse and technology and science are not keeping up. On the other hand, getting worse is what it's going to take to get people to take these crises seriously and work together to save ourselves. The planet will be fine. It's humankind that's in trouble. It's not inconceivable that in a hundred years people will look back at the 20th century as either a golden age of plenty, or else a disastrously wasteful period in which we sold out our future for a pittance.

I have a double corner lot in the city, and a small pond. I already grow my own vegetables. Next year I will grow quinoa too, and I'm planning on raising chickens and if possible, raising food fish in my pond. I already drive fewer than 5,000 miles per year in a compact, high mpg car, and I can walk or bike to most places I need to go. I already compost and recycle. I already live within my means and have minimal debt. These are small things, but I am in better shape than many of my neighbors. Knowing this doesn't make things that much better for me, because we are going to need our neighbors much more in the future.

In the last year I've picked up books on basic farming, cooking, and reread Alas Babylon. I've doubled my exercise. I'm going to back to school pre-med. I hope that your comment on wealth and illness wasn't a real suggestion of your financial state. I am really terrified about our future.

The End of Days is always an approaching certainty for each one of us personally, and that fact never fails to put any current events in a special perspective.

Carlos Castaneda's "don Juan" reproached him: "Death is the only wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'" (Journey to Ixtlan, p. 55)

Of course nowadays, Carlos would also face a dreaded return trip to Oprah's Book Club to suffer some memoir wrath -- a potentially worse fate.

Maybe things will be better if the world goes to hell. I think I would be much happier worrying about food and clothing than worrying about trivial things. Not that I would ever voluntarily choose that. Humans are happier when experiencing extreme pain and pleasure than when they are sinking into apathy. I want to see the work of my hands. I want things to be simpler. In either case I'm not going to worry about things I have no control over. Humans are extraordinarily resilient. I might dream of of hunting deer in the snowy woods though.

Geez, you really woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. There are only two things you have to remember to live a happy life:

1. Don't sweat the small sh*t.
2. Remember that everything is small sh*t.

Ebert: Hope I don't die with sh*t on my face.

Whoa..now it REALLY feels like Monday! I find that if I really think about this stuff, I can become almost paralysed with fear. So, Like most people, I think, I tend to burrow myself in, worry about my immediate family, kids and grandkids, and extending out a bit further, help feed the people in my community and try to recycle, avoid waste and conspicuous consumption. (I was horrified by Christmas Eve dinner, in which my sister in law achieved the miracle of the loaves and fishes in reverse..food for 5,000 used to feed 18) Oh..and pray. Beyond that, there isn't much else I can do, short of running for office, which ain't gonna happen.

For some reason I now imagine you as some form of demented Howard Beale, screeching and screaming at an audience of dull idiots. But instead of the Soviet's or the Arabs or the economy it's something more elemental: existence, a fight against the rising waves of apathy that threaten to swallow our society. No one cares anymore, we've all given up and curled up in our cheap apartments with our hopes and dreams left in the corner to rot and die.

We used to think we'd go to Mars, we used to think we'd mimic the sun with our powerplants, we used to think we'd make flying cars and cure cancer!

What happened?

We just gave up.

Roger, thank you for the post. Though I don't think it's going to change much. You're fighting apathy, the most horrible tyrant among Man's vices.

Ebert: Isn't one of the problems that Americans no longer get as good an education in the first 12 grades as they used to? Some of the comments from ID defenders on the Ben Stein entry make me feel just plain sorry for them--entirely apart from the issue of who is right or wrong.

Amen, brother Ebert! Your last paragraph was genius, though sadly it will fall on deaf ears :(

I am surprised to read such pessimism from someone raised Catholic. Try putting your trust in the Lord. Do you really think God would create a planet and give it to man if man could destroy it without intention? Do you think God would really allow the earth to be destroyed? Everything will be ok, we just need to keep working and minding to our businesses and we'll be fine.

Ebert: On the other hand, perhaps God will think: "Well, I created around 20 million species on that planet, and that one species wiped out millions of them, so they deserve to reap the harvest."

"...and that our problems would be "solved" by science."

I think most of us felt this way at some point. Unfortunately, we have had an administration in office for eight years that doesn't believe in science. Eight years of stalling scientific inovation is just another disaster to add on your list.

Fascinating how all the dire, certain predictions one hears stoke less fear than the sheer apparent expanse of the probability space before us. Knowing for sure you're headed for the guillotine must, in some unfathomable way, beat knowing you've got a 50% probability of going under the blade and remaining unsure whether you can do a damn thing to change the number.

Great post, Roger. I am a little ashamed to admit this, but I am not very informed on the issue of global warming. Do you know of a good source I could check out to learn more about it?

Common sense tells me that the weather is definitely erratic. For example, here in northwest Ohio a week ago it was 20-below wind chill, and 48 hours later it was 67 degrees. Also, last year hurricane remnants brought a devatating flood to our area that ruined many businesses. That just isn't normal. Something isn't right.

Ebert: Someone will recommend one. I saw a review the other day about a book that explains how corporations in many fields have adopted the original strategy of the Tobacco Institute in "selling the controversy." You cite (or, in the case of tobacco, pay) a few scientists who support you, and then your p.r. machine argues "there are questions that still need study." Same strategy has been used by energy companies to question global warming.

My wife's been after me for awhile to move out to the country somewhere, but we haven't got a way to do so. Now I'm wondering if we shouldn't find a way. I've never been a country boy, but given the choice between being in a city when food riots break out and being in the country with my own potato patch...

I dunno. I'm like you, bubba. What's going on scares the shit outta me. And I see it getting a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

Miles

Given the choice between being born this year and 1908 I'd "roll the bones" and take a chance on the 21st century.

Your mood certainly is black, along with your graphics. I don't think Obama alone could possibly solve all this. He'd have to be superhuman. He's going to need a lot of help, ideas from the best and brightest of the world, like yourself, and a willingness on the part of the American people to soldier on in the face of difficult times. In this situation, perhaps it does take audacity and courage to have hope.

The economy may be able to be straightened out, but not in a year or two. It might help deter future economic crimes if those who steal from millions of people got harsher penalties than those who rob one or a few.

"It is a question of what in the hell is happening?"

I don't suppose you'll agree, by the theory that most covers the facts, for me, comes from the spirituality folks. Psychics have been predicting times like this during this decade since the sixties, if not before, although their interpretations of what it meant have been different.

Their current slant on it is that the earth itself is going to "ascend" to a higher level -- sort of a physical-to-spiritual transition, though that sounds a lot like death. Those who are spiritually ready to also transition to a higher level will be leaving the physical earth, i.e., dying or appearing to die in large numbers, to continue on a more spiritual plane.

One psychic was asked, "How will we know when this begins," and the answer was, "When the animals start disappearing from the cities." Didn't I just read about all the bees disappearing from somewhere? Who else has an explanation for that? Perhaps, species by species, the animals will ascend?

Okay, this sounds very flaky, but I'm not a flake. I feel much more comfortable with this than with Armageddon. I look at this from a scientific point of view: who can explain what's going on? Well, this is the only hypothesis I've heard that at least covers the facts and offers an answer to your question, even if it's not a very satisfying answer.

We certainly live in interesting times.

Ebert: How about this for a hypothesis: We are poisoning the planet and the animals leave the worst parts first?

While the lack of children was a conceit, the world as shown in Children of Men is one of the more realistic (and therefore scary) visions of the near future that I've seen. It seems to me that enlightened self interest would be to work against it as much as you can while still positioning yourself to be on the "have" side of that have/have not divide. Somehow, that's not a very satisfying answer.

The recent "A Scanner Darkly" also seems a little too close to be comfortable. What others might serve as warnings?

Well...I'll just say this. In a way, this is how Middle Easterners have always lived, fearing a nuclear strike from the United States and having to make-do with, well, shabby conditions and second-rate/corrupt leaders. This, however, cannot be excused on these terms. In a way, this is a good thing: if we're less divided as a human race, we might actually try helping each other. This might actually be a good thing.

While the lack of children was a conceit, the world as shown in Children of Men is one of the more realistic (and therefore scary) visions of the near future that I've seen. It seems to me that enlightened self interest would be to work against it as much as you can while still positioning yourself to be on the "have" side of that have/have not divide. Somehow, that's not a very satisfying answer.

The recent "A Scanner Darkly" also seems a little too close to be comfortable. What others serve as warnings?

(Note: Sorry if this goes through multiple times - I'm getting a blank page when I click Submit.)

I am going to avoid Bush bashing with this post. I think what I'm writing here is important enough for all of us to read it:

As I have written before, I am a science teacher in Indiana. Here's what I tell my students about global warming:

I have been a skeptic about just about everything since my early twenties. In 1993, when I first read about global climate change, I was very skeptical. I was right to be so: We should all be more skeptical when hearing any new claim.

Global warming isn't really debated much among scientists anymore. Science is based in evidence and the evidence is now overwhelming that global warming exists. Global warming is not a fantasy. It is not the result of a bunch of liberal environmentalists. It is not anti-Christian or anti-American. It is for real. Then I show the kids the evidence in support of global warming.

Please refer your readers to the folowing article, the article I give to my students:

http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_human_induced_climate_change.html

It only takes about 20 minutes to read it, so give it a try. Then please note that it is published by the Skeptic's Society, hardly a bunch of environmental-wackos. Note that the Skeptic's Society includes contributions from across the political spectrum.

Global warming should have nothing to do with poltics. This is coming from the same guy who wrote in a previous response that he found Al Gore's movie about global warming boring. Global warming is for real.

I've been known as a 'sensitive' person, but I've never found myself crying at a blog post before.
Not that this blog is bad, or that it's put me down. My eyes welled up for the realization you've brought to so many of my fears. Thank you.

Another good question is, how can Obama possibly succeed when not only the government, but also the population of our country is starting to seem so inert, lazy and dumb? I realize it's crazy fringe-left blasphemy to say such things about the American People, and normally I myself would have cast the first stone at the offender, but I recently read two articles that finally broke the camel's back. One was the NY Times piece on the decade-old German invention of "passive houses" that take as much energy to heat as it takes to run your average hair dryer, due to smart airflow design and good insulation, and only cost a few percent more than an ordinary house. There are thousands of them already built, and thousands more going up all over Europe (there are, to my knowledge, no plans to import or produce significant numbers of these houses in this country). And another article, about how the recent dip in gas prices has, again, revived sales of trucks and SUV's in our country. It only took global economic catastrophe to make things normal again for the American driver.

You are a far better writer than I, so maybe you know the words to describe this level of blindness and stupidity. It's easy to blame ads and corporations for the decline in our national attention span and ability to reason and plan a week ahead, but for Jawaharlal's sake, are these people unable to remember life as it was 2 months ago? All it takes to refrain from buying an Escalade in today's conditions is logic simple and obvious enough that can fit into a text message... heck, even a Twitter message. What in the world is going on with us?

I just have to ask, but did you add more after posting this entry the first time?

Ebert: Not a word. What made you ask?

Thank you, Mr. Ebert, for giving us such a stirring post. As a 21-year-old in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are indeed mornings when I feel like I'm waking up to the end of the world, and when meetings with academic advisors seem pointless considering. I am acutely aware that we may be in a secular "End of Days" -- or that at least for us, as Milosz wrote, "There will be no other end of the world." Strangely, your post reminded me of this summer's "The Happening" -- critically panned (not by you), but powerfully pessimistic about where we're going.

The bombs falling on Gaza right now, and Israel's likely ground operation there, are the clearest signal yet that it's all just beginning -- we have no idea how much worse this will get. Yet I still have some hope. And I believe that the job of humanists, and humanism in general, is to offer that hope even when it sounds vapid or irrational. I'm reminded of two great pieces that never fail to move me completely. First, William Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech:

"I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

And second, the final lines of Auden's "September 1, 1939":

"Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."

"I do not believe the 21st century will belong to anybody, and it may not last for 100 years of human witness."

It's easy to look at all the crazy things happening and assume that human resiliency can only go so far, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Yes, climate shift is going to result in a new way of thinking about the world, and it may force many countries to readjust...and there are fanatics who believe their faiths justify wholesale murder. We're in for a lot of serious challenges.

But humanity not lasting another hundred years? I find that incredibly difficult to believe. One of our defining traits as a species is our incredible adaptability. As a Darwinist like you can attest, we now evolve more through education than genes. Look at how our approach to the environment can change significantly in a decade.

I'm not saying that things won't be enormously different a hundred years from now. But we probably will be, too. Doomsaying strikes me as a sign of defeat.

Michael,

I really wish I believed that only corporations were blind to long term consequences. Unfortunately, politicians are too worries about reelection in 2-4 years to do anything that might ultimately make a difference but be unpopular short term.

Just wish I knew what the answer is...

Nick

Why not tell us what you really think?

Yeats' poem was so prophetic, written in the aftermath of the First World War, it manifested itself over the next two decades.

I know that Modernism was a response to the Victorian and romanticized ideals of the past couple centuries. And I do agree that every facet of our modern world is in a state of absolute turmoil, with a future as "blank and pitiless as the sun." But did America not emerge, in the aftermath of the Depression, a more solid, grateful, and unified nation? Could it be that a couple decades of suffering every few centuries is just what a country (or planet) requires in order to take counsel, reevaluate priorities, and return to a place of order, sanity, and redemption? We decompose in order to birth new life that will thrive at even greater heights.

I am not an optimist at heart. But I think our survival (in both tangible and spiritual terms) is contingent upon our willingness to believe that a better life awaits us, even if that existence is relocated a bit further inland.

Thank you for another eloquent blog. And don't forget to ask your physician about Lexapro.

Not to be too optimistic, but I think the answers may lie in school system. Last Winter term, I was a community college student in Oregon City, OR and took a Political Science class from a wonderful professor named Dean Darris. He spent a lot of time talking about the economy, trying to get us to understand the system and the many ways in which it is broken. He never once said it was hopeless, however, and gave us suggestions of his own, as well as encouraged us to come up with our own solutions for the crises we face in the here & now, and into the future... He was the most inspirational man I've ever met, coaxing even the most apparently bird-brained people to thought and careful consideration, and we all left with a better understanding of how to make our world a better place. He has a textbook he wrote called AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: PROMISE & BETRAYAL, which ought be required reading for everyone in college, political science student or no. We need to all become political science "students" because it will save us in the end.

Being only 16 years of age, I must admit how truly fearful I am of the future. I'd like to place my faith in Science and Reason, as you stated, but as of late my faith has been quite yielding.

As an atheist, looking to something to place my faith in has been quite a challenge. But Barack Obama may fill that void that has grown inside of me. I only hope that he can bring the change he promised; but that ideology is looking quite bleak, as of late.

Well at least I can hide my fears in current movies in video games! Let's see what's playing..."Yes Man"..."Twilight"..."Role Models"? Oh God, maybe the world really is coming to an end.

Your arrangement of symbols, slick, simple, and sacred, deliver the message with a taint of perfection and a wallop of dire. We truly are in an age where the "million pound shit hammer" dangles above our dreams and realities.

Dystopia for breakfast. Yikes. But well-earned yikes.

I am not a religious guy, nor do I put much stock in any kind of otherworldliness that could be grasped by a human mind. But I have never held quite the rancor for religion that some others do, maybe because I love The Beatles almost as much as some people seem to go for Jesus, and so I can sorta understand that kinda fervor. Also, I have admiration for anyone these days that can truly believe in something that they have no proof of. It's romantic to me.

But our current problems on this planet (and, yes, I too am quite worried that we'll all be living in some war-torn CHILDREN OF MEN scene sooner than we realize) seem to be based on two very troublesome constants:
1) Greed. Insurmountable, I-don't-care-what-happens-tomorrow-style greed. It's not that capitalism WORKS so much better than other modes of society... it's just apparently the most fun, if you've got the teeth for it.
2) The belief held deeply by those otherwise respectable religious folk that Earth is just some staging area, and is therefore dispensable, since they're all going to heaven, where - as David Byrne said - "nothing ever happens", and nothing gets worse or better.... and beyond that, the idea that we're "God's children" and we couldn't possibly fuck this world up, because God is watching out for us, and haven't you heard that it's cyclical? (That global warming has been allowed to morph into a political issue may be the last major mistake humanity may be allowed to make...)

So what do we do? Do we alter our life-plans? Decide we won't be married, won't have kids, and just instead decide the best and safest way to batten down the hatches? Or do we try to get in one more smiling game of golf before the fireball hits?

I can't help but believe that things are gonna get much worse. But I also can't help and imagine that, systems of chaos not being perfect, humanity will make it through this. That we'll be okay. My mind simply clicks to this ultimate possibility, because we've always been "okay" before ... and yet maybe that's the same fatal flaw that's killing us. Nobody ever said we were due a happy ending.

And as far as our country, all I can do is simply post the lyrics to a terrific recent song by the great realist of the singer-songwriter era, Randy Newman:

"A Few Words in Defense of our Country"

I’d like to say a few words
In defense of our country
Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean
Now the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?

Take the Caesars for example
Why within the first few of them
They were sleeping with their sister
Stashing little boys in swimming pools
And burning down the City
And one of ‘em, one of 'em
Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire
That’s like vice president or something

That’s not a very good example, is it?

But wait, here’s one, the Spanish Inquisition
They put people in a terrible position
I don’t even like to think about it

Well, sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words in defense of our country
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
Now we don’t want their love
And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question
But in times like these
We sure could use a friend

Hitler. Stalin.
Men who need no introduction

King Leopold of Belgium. That’s right.
Everyone thinks he’s so great
Well he owned The Congo
He tore it up too
He took the diamonds, he took the gold
He took the silver
Know what he left them with?

Malaria

A President once said,
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraid
That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?
That’s what it used to mean

[To the first eight bars of "Columbia The Gem Of The Ocean"]

You know it pisses me off a little
That this Supreme Court is gonna outlive me
A couple of young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now too
But I defy you, anywhere in the world
To find me two Italians as tightass as the two Italians we got

And as for the brother
Well, Pluto’s not a planet anymore either

The end of an empire is messy at best
And this empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Someone told me recently that the time is coming when there can be no more divisions between man if we hope to survive as a species. I countered that the time for that has always existed, and we are finally now suffering the consequences.

Have you seen Larry Fessenden's newest film? It philosophically sums up the problem that we’re currently facing as a species, with a simple, chilling proposition: “Why do we hate the earth that nourishes us? And why wouldn't nature destroy us, like a host fights off a parasite?” The question might be rhetorical, but it suggests the most Inconvenient Truth of all.

"There, she defies God by asserting something we have all thought from time to time: That he has made us his playthings,that he has asked too much of his creatures. That being free to create any universe, he has made one that stands much in need of improvement."
-Roger Ebert, "The Rapture", 1991

In "The Totally Unnecessary Remake of the Day The Earth Stood Still," there was fear and panic when the advanced alien civilization started removing humanity...

A much better solution would have been, remove 50% of humanity. Humanity isn't destroying the earth. An overabundance of humanity is causing some damage.

The United States is actually in a good position to survive the next 100 years. If we produce electric cars using batteries with better technology, we won't have to worry about gas. We're "that close".... (holds fingers 75 years apart)

I think a bigger issue is, we're not making any progress.

We allow "backward thinking" to... OK, without being too specific, what are we doing about Third World nations who are building their own nuclear weapons? Pakistan? India? It might make sense for ONE country (the US) to have nuclear weapons. But eight countries with nuclear weapons? It's a pretty simple exercise in Game Theory. If you have nuclear weapons in the hands of two opposite sides on a border, somebody will use them. Unless we step in and solve the problems that would tempt some idiot to use them.

We've got the solution. Reduce the total global population. People die every year. If we prevent children from being born, the population will go down. Getting earth's human population under three billion would solve most of our immediate problems. A good Death Ray would solve even more.

Reply to: Ebert: for some believers religion is the new tribalism.I dreamed, we all dreamed, for years that the future held vague visions of progress and prosperity, and that our problems would be "solved" by science. How many of us are so sure about that now?

If the new "Star Trek" was in theaters now, we would all feel better. Science does have the solution. Obama is obviously a Vulcan name. OK, maybe not. Start thinking seriously about a fair method of population reduction, and we can get through this.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing that if you were 30-40 years younger, you'd feel more optimistic about the future. You'd have no choice.

Ebert: Maybe.But does realism give you more of a choice at a younger age? My hope right now is that I will be proven wrong.

Being only 16 years of age, I must admit how truly fearful I am of the future. I'd like to place my faith in Science and Reason, as you stated, but as of late my faith has been quite yielding.

As an atheist, looking to something to place my faith in has been quite a challenge. But Barack Obama may fill that void that has grown inside of me. I only hope that he can bring the change he promised; but that ideology is looking quite bleak, as of late.

Well at least I can hide my fears in current movies in video games! Let's see what's playing..."Yes Man"..."Twilight"..."Role Models"? Oh God, maybe the world really is coming to an end.

There seems to be a failure of imagination when it comes to predicting the future. In literature, in cinema, in blogs (ha!), such predictions tend to fall into two categories: utopian or distopian. Think back to the 50s and early 60s (I'm extrapolating from historical evidence, here, since I was not yet born by a few decades). The future was bubble cities, flying cars, robot workers, and unhindered space flight--or it was a nuclear wasteland. Both images seemed plausible from the evidence at the time.
If one were to go back to that time, how exactly would she explain it? 'It is similar, but different. Our lives have gotten easier in some respects, more difficult in others. Everything is more complicated [though I doubt that]." How strange it would seem to them! Try explaining the internet and how it's one of the most important inventions in human history. Try to explain how a mobile phone is more revolutionary than a flying car. Computers? What's so amazing about a machine that can compute?
Predicting the future requires the consideration of infinite variables (not infinite in a mathematical sense, but in a sense of human conception), and each variable is dependent on the others' outcome. Reducing the future to 'it's all going to hell in a hand basket' does justice neither to the complexity of the future nor the complexity of the hand basket.
Not to say I doubt the existence of global warming. Not to say I believe our economy is anything but gravely ill. Not to discount the rise of terrorism as one of the most effective political tools in the world. All these and more! All aboard the hand-basket express! Yet if I can make one prediction about where we'll be in 2050 (and not fear being wrong), it is this: it'll be somewhat similar, but very different at the same time. It's not a very helpful prediction, not worthy of Nostradamus, but I'm sure it's much more accurate than any big-budget sci-fi movie ever made.

Well put.

But if I can offer a humble suggestion: it is no longer up to the U.S. President to bring 'world peace'. Or fix global warming, or stop the seas from rising. We should concentrate on fixing the problems here.

That time of year to assess things, and learn from our mistakes, and plan for a better future. There is good cause for anger, and some small cause for hope. There will be needless suffering, for sure, much of it caused by our own short sightedness. But there will also be love, and art, and babies being born, and spectacular sunsets, and smiles between strangers. And maybe a rain of frogs, too.

Bill, exactly which 50% are you thinking of? Where would you aim your death ray? Oh, God, to hear the insect on the leaf, proclaiming on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.

Roger, I think my fear hit its tipping point when I read an article in People magazine about a man trying to shut down Amish puppy mills.

Let me just restate that: The Amish run puppy mills.

No, not all of them of course. But to hear a someone from a group of people I had always thought of as humble, devout and good declare that puppies are just a crop to be brought in and sold--I think I gave up then.

I don't think I want to attend your New Year's Eve party.

Cheer up - it's bad now, but it's been bad before. Cooler heads will prevail in Pakistan and India, the stocks that have gone down will go back up, because they always do. This recession will end, sadly not soon enough to bail everyone out of tragic losses, but by this time next year there will be more people working than there are now. And global warming exists but it's not as bad as has been ballyhooed in the press - really. The earth gets warmer, the earth gets cooler (which, by the way, is what it's doing now).

How do I know all of this for certain? I don't. But you know what? You don't know all of your dire predictions will come true either. And neither do all of the so-called experts who had us all dead from bird flu a couple of years ago. How's that workin' out?

Have a little faith - if not in God as I do, than in your fellow man. Don't judge the species by its worst examples. And go watch some classic MGM musicals- no one can be depressed during "Singin' in the Rain'" or "The Bandwagon."

I know how you feel. I went through a deep depression in 2006 because of these same issues. I felt pretty alone, I felt that I was the only one who could see what was going on. But of course I wasn't the only one. And although it is disappointing in many ways to know that I was right on these issues, there is hope now that the masses of people will start to take the world around them more seriously.

But what does it say about a culture where doomsday predictions enter mainstream thought only after an economic collapse? What it says is that what scares Americans the most is someone taking their toys away. Americans literally equate this to the end of the world. The other problems we saw over the past few years didn't phase most people at all. Truth be told, we probably need this to happen to our economy. As you said, our politicians and corporations have not cared about our culture or our world for far too long. The party never lasts forever.

Unfortunately, our government is ill-equipped to be able to handle anything like what we are having to go through now. And yes this is solely because of the Bush administration. Who knew our democracy was so fragile to where a single Presidency could bring it to the edge of ruin? I don't think anyone knew, and shamefully many are still in denial.

Call me silly, but I can't help but think about Watchmen (the graphic novel). Written by a cynical British man about the end of American optimism and the moral complexities behind global peace (as well as being an antidote to juvenile superheroes), Watchmen seems as timely as ever. It gave birth to one of its immortal lines: "God is real, and he's an American."

It is above all about the morality of free will and their far-reaching consequences (a 'good' choice can lead to a bad outcome), and it concludes on both an ominous and an optimistic note: "Nothing ever truly ends..."

To look towards Obama, or Congress, or the government for salvation is a mistake. A government can only do so much, and the world will not improve until the people in it do. This has nothing to do with science or the economy or religion, but merely the state of mankind's mind. Until that is altered, nothing else will be. You may say that it won't ever alter - or ask how it could, or else why it should, or if it even can in the first place - but those questions would all be beside the point. It will or it will not, and we can only hope - it is our duty to hope - that it will. And, if enough people hope, that may be enough by itself. If it isn't, then we will continue to live in a world that is nasty and brutish, or we will not. But even that may be beside the point.

I think you're slightly overstating the chances of an American economic meltdown. True we've "borrowed a lot of money" from the Chinese, but when we say "borrowed money from the Chinese" what this really means is that the Chinese have purchased American Treasury bonds. If they choose to call in our debt to them, the US government pays them back for their Treasury Bonds in US dollars. Therefore, these foreign countries have a strong incentive to ensure the dollar stays stable.

I agree that there are serious structural issues that we need to address within our economy. Huge corporations have too much control, and that control is becoming increasingly unchecked as they continue to get results from their corporate interest groups lobbying in DC. But for the foreseeable future, the US economy will do fine as long as the world economy stays healthy, which it should, and barring the event of a Major War.

Someone needs to watch the final five minutes of Life Of Brian again! Buck up, little camper!

I am in the minority about the whole global warming thing, BUT! I agree we need to clean up our act. We had a mini ice age in the mid 1600s if I'm not mistaken (somewhere in there anyway)and is as much influenced by the Sun's activity as our own idiocy. I am all for us stopping our idiocy, mind you, but let's not think that bad factory practices and gas dependency killed the dinosaurs.

And yes, the Middle East does have nukes, but so did the Soviets. I was raised to expect a nuclear death, (far more dramatic than my grandparents, they died in their sleep!), but that hasn't quite materialized, or dematerialized as it were.

As for the economy, greedy American materialism got us in this mess, and it's going to get us out. Not sure about where your readers are, but I live in Virginia and shopping was as mad this year as ever. Roads and malls jammed; people don't seem to care about recessions when there's a sale at Penny's! And our magnificently intelligent government has found a way to get us out of debt: they're going to make more money! Why didn't I think of that?! And now they're going to give US some of that money! I think it'll be in the $1,000 range, but if they are going to destroy the value of the dollar, why not just give us $10,000? Think of the spending we would do!

Yes, Virginia, we are all going to die. But slowly. Dully. Not in fire, or poverty, or smog, but with our eyes falling slowly closed while watching the news anchor tell us about how Israel will fight Hamas to the end, and Hamas won't stop fighting until Israel stops.

Fear, worry, unflinching looks at dismal reality.Only consuming what you can pay for in cash ( while it's still available, anyway).Welcome to my world. As a "have not" in the post Katrina world, I'm just one disaster away from being ethnically cleansed, or just left to die. But still I hope for survival, and better things. What else can I do? I don't expect that I'll be lucky and go on, and am stockpiling painkillers so that I can miss the worst of it. But thinking that humans won't go on... it's just- too much. Read "The Twilight of American Culture" by Morris Berman. Maybe the people he describes will survive.

I just can't be that pessimistic. Nuclear weapons have been around for 60+ years now, and even tiny unstable nations could have been making dirty bombs for 30 years. After the first two, nobody ever used one.

I think we'll be ok.

Last I heard the sun will be dying out in a couple of billion years and nobody has a plan for that. There was a recent special on the other day about global warming being caused by tectonic plate shifting. A wiki answer states:
"Plate Tectonics may disturb the large amount of CH4 & CO2 locked or sequestered, esp. in sea beds. This may bubble up & add to greenhouse gases. This may, or may not, be 'the cause' of recent global warming, but at least it's more consistent with historical record than conventional 'industrial gases' response. First, the 'industrial gases' response confuses two recent events (CO2, CH4 rise & rise in temperature) with implied causality. Second, the 'industrial gases' response is not consistent with ancient data showing global warming-&-cooling (& CO2, CH4... level atmospheric shifts) even well before industrialized man."
Since it seems that if we follow the more popular notions regarding global warming we are all already doomed-as stated in this very blog-lets hope that we are indeed in a era that will be later referred to as the green scare.
Reading about the former Soviet Union taught me at least one thing, it is that an overriding government will should never be contemplated as an answer to problem "X". If the human species could only survive as long as an all-powerful government strictly regulated it...well let me be the first one off that boat. I'd rather swim with sharks then live safe and snug in the belly of a whale.
Like the old Irish song once told me if the moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die.

Roger -

Do I need to mention that much of the technology we require already exists?

I'm waiting... breathlessly!... for somebody in power to press these technologies into use.

My field of study is environmental architecture, and the methods and materials available would amaze you. What do you think about GM building us a new, green infrastructure and building materials?

Chin up.

Your friend in Oklahoma City,
Brandon

Well, it's apparent that I should get into the tinfoil business. It seems as if Ebert already has his tinfoil hat, and the rest of the nation is soon to follow.

I rarely ever comment on blogs, but Mr. Ebert, I do believe that your blog entry is one of those blogs that definitely need to be commented upon.

I wholeheartedly agree with every single last word written. But I honestly can't say that I'm pessimistic for our futures. I feel that, even if everything collapses in on ourselves, who knows? Maybe we'll be better off in some other universe, or plane, or dimension, or not even existing at all.

However, I wonder and I fear of course, because I have to. If not, then it'd be much more prudent to do the world a favor and just take a bullet to the head if I believed in the futility of the situation. There's a million and one things to be done, and sadly, the generation before mine has done a less than admirable job as caretakers of this Earth.

Perhaps their mistakes will be my generation's triumphs. I mean, 50 years ago, blacks and white were segregated due to the color of their skin, but after the civil rights movement, we've learned that: "Gee. Maybe these people DESERVE to be treated as people....." Took us a couple of centuries, but hey, we still understood after a while. So that's why I ask, Who knows?

Right now, we can't afford to blame everyone and not take responsibility. That's what's got us into this mess in the first place. For now, as you said Mr. Ebert, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and everyone else alike (American or not) need to come together and figure out a way out of this mess. Because, I strongly believe that for every problem, a solution is there. Perhaps intricately hidden, but nonetheless, still there.

Even more disturbing than the conditions you mentioned is the apparent sense that it's "all beyond our control." When I was a child, my parents made it abundantly clear that, although my toys were given to me, once they were in my possession they were my responsibility. Hence, if I broke it, I could fix it or discard it - my choice.
The real fly in the ointment here is not our condition, it's the paralyzing assumption that somehow it's too far gone to fix. That, in my opinion, is totally untenable. Why Obama is so (perhaps unrealistically) valued is summed up in the slogan "yes, we can." Political hyperbole? Probably, but it rang a bell. It's an attitude that most people would like to adopt, if only their leaders would, in fact, lead the way. All our leaders, political and cultural...

"I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing that if you were 30-40 years younger, you'd feel more optimistic about the future. You'd have no choice."

As a young person (22), I take issue with this statement. I can't count the times I sit in class, or run around at work, or lie awake at night, literally hoping for and imagining ways for the world to end. I assure you that my reasons are purely selfish, most of which are along the lines of "If the world ends, I won't have to do that awful ten page paper or give that presentation." It's why I watch the news in the morning. Something horrible might have happened, or the power might have gone out, or there might be too much snow to prevent me from having to drive to school. When my job is especially awful, my hope is not that I'll be fired or that I'll find a better job. It's that the store will close, and I'll be absolved from blame and responsibility of my own inadequacy. If the world ends, I won't have to keep going to school, I won't have to find a job with my degree, I won't have to make new friends, I won't have to move, I won't have to find a woman to marry or live alone the rest of my life, and I will not have let anyone down.

However, one can't help but note that people have been calling the end of the world almost since the beginning. I hope this time that someone is right. Maybe it's my negative vibes that are causing everything to go to hell. I'm drawing a little from George Carlin a bit, but I say good riddance. Let's sit back and watch the show.

I would first off like to thank you for putting the blinding fear of secular judgement day in me inside your first paragraph - stunning work! Secondly, I have a problem with the last bit: sorting who to trust and about what and to what degree would seem to be a product of what and where one considers "The Brink" to be. Al Gore said in his "An Inconvenient Truth" that global warming is not a political issue, but a moral issue; sorry bub, but it manages to be both. As big and as evil the monster, it always means different things to different people, and we'd be wise to start there. We'd be wise to communicate, and to do that we need to hold some partisanship.

Someone before me suggested we Read Yeats, listen to The Beatles, and watch good movies, etc. Good sentiment but leave it at the quality of the medium instead of the definite article, huh? I'll sort out my own reading and we'll discuss later.

We're going to be alright.

As far as films are concerned, I think the current situation is more akin to Bio-Dome; if Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin could attain homeostasis and save the day, surely the folks in charge can salvage the world from this crisis. Right?

Our lifestyles and choices are finally catching up with us, as individuals and as a government.

I wish more people would consider living in a way similar to Thoreau's in his two and a half years spent at Walden Pond. But, I suppose that's too much to ask of a population that's used to taking heat and convenience for granted.

And, what of the folk across the seas and borders who can't seem to agree on anything? Peoples are attacking each other over territorial disputes, leaders bicker as citizens suffer and die amid their own filth and ruin, and industrialized countries exploit the economic benefits of human rights abuses. How discontenting it is to know that around the world there are populations that are forced to accept things like suicide bombings, abductions, the sound of automatic gunfire as commonplace occurrences.

People would rather indulge in the luxuries brought by the mechanics of innovation without even considering the costs in the long run. Even as simple logic warns of the deleterious effects to come, it fails to deter people from enacting temperance, or from seeking alternatives. People don't care to understand the marginal benefit of living a proactive life until the cost of living reactively is brought before them.

I wonder what Chance the gardener would say amidst our current economic crisis. Is there a simple unwitting gardening metaphor that he can bestow on an over-analytical public? The season we're in is no ordinary winter, and the springs and summers are looking bleaker and bleaker every year.

"I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing that if you were 30-40 years younger, you'd feel more optimistic about the future. You'd have no choice."

I'm 24. There's certainly a choice. Altho I'll say I find Ebert's doom scenario rather optimistic. The real nightmare, and what will almost certainly happen, is no collapse, no death, no possible rebirth. No bands of subsistance farming survivors, no absence of government. Rather, same old crap, same old power games, same old hierarchy and meaningless, vapid, consumer culture, only always a little worse, every year a little worse.

Roger,

Yikes! What an exceedingly bleak picture you paint! And while I agree with many of the concerns you list, I do not share your pessimism about the outcome. I'm not blindly optimistic - I think things will get worse, maybe much worse, before they get better. And we Americans will probably never again enjoy the same kind of materialistic wealth, or sense of global supremacy, that we did in the second half of the 20th century. But I do have faith in the ultimate intelligence of our race and our desire for self-preservation, and I do think the current batch of problems - economic, environmental, diplomatic - will be solved, though the solutions may take quite a while. As a man of 45, with children ages 10 & 11, if I didn't have hope for the future life would be pretty bleak, if worth living at all.

Nietzsche said that mankind would limp on through the twentieth century "on the mere pittance" of the old decaying God-based moral codes. But then, in the twenty-first, would come a period more dreadful than the great wars, a time of "the total eclipse of all values"(in The Will to Power). This would also be a frantic period of "revaluation," in which people would try to find new systems of values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."

Tom Wolfe -- Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died(1996)

The twenty-first century, I predict, will confound the twentieth- century notion of the Future as something exciting, novel, unexpected, or radiant; as Progress, to use an old word.

Tom Wolfe -- The Great Relearning(2000)

I read of your despair, and I despair of your despair. What a whiz-bang way to start off the New Year! Of course we all need to be reminded that we could come closer to solving so many of the world's woes by de-emphasizing hard-line ideology - but unfortunately, we also have to remember that the ideologues are about as likely to give ground as they are to sprout wings and fly. /*/*/ This might seem to be off-topic, but I'll fly it here anyway: The thing that bugged me most about this last election cycle was the way that the pundits identified the most extreme ideological elements of each major party as its "base" - the 'neocons' on the right and ... what are we calling hard-line leftists this week? (Bill O'Reilly is trying to promote 'secular progressive', but he just uses that as a blanket term for anybody he doesn't like; I don't think it'll keep.) /*/*/ Where was I? Oh, yeah...the 'base'. As bad as i was in high school geometry, I do remember that the base of any structure is supposed to be the most widespread part, which supports the whole. Applied to politics, this means that the candidate closest to the center prevails, even if only by default. McCain went hard to starboard, and so centrist Republicans moved to Obama. Now the Limbaugh-Coulter-Bozell wing is denouncing McCain, Powell, and others as not being "true conservatives". Meanwhile, the far-left Dems are dismayed that Obama is not being as ideologically pure as they would like (Rev. Warren, Sec. Gates, more to come) We could well be looking, perhaps a decade down the line, at a revolt of the center against the hardliners at both ends. If something like that should happen - a full-fledged third party of the center - we could be looking at the most chaotic political situation ever. Maybe I'm just getting goofy in my dotage; most likely this won't happen at all. As Casey Stengel said, "Only three things can happen in a ball game: you win, you lose, or it rains." Meanwhile, it might be well to remember something else Ol' Casey said, when asked what the secret of successful managing was: "Keeping the five guys who hate you away from the five guys who haven't decided yet." /*/*/ Since somebody mentioned Guy Lombardo, I think I'll quote his famous gag from "Laugh-In": "When I go, I'm taking New Year's Eve with me!" As it turns out, that's exactly what he did.

Ebert: Two by two, they go marching through,
The Sweethearts on Parade.
How I cry, as they pass me by,
The Sweethearts on Parade.
I would like to join them but they bar me,
For it takes more than one to join their their army...

The world is always ending.

The Apocalypse is a never-ending event.

Human civilization is an evolutionary experiment. We're not going to make it, but then again, maybe we're not supposed to. Just as the parameters of our own life give it meaning, so it goes for the whole of humanity. It is our ultimate fate to no longer exist, and, as such, this is what gives what we have all collectively created (and destroyed) such beauty and meaning and luminosity.

When people talk about the end of days what they are inevitably talking about is the end of their own lives.

Today's children will grow up in a world that seems normal to them. They will take for granted all of the problems that we see as irrevocable.

It's a shame that the world doesn't end with us.

That is the truly sad thing about life.

That it goes on.

Ebert: There is a sci-fi story about an astronaut who sees a global nuclear war break out, and his radio goes dead, and so as long as his air holds out he starts broadcasting to the stars, everything he can think of. The last whisper before he dies is a Knock-Knock joke.

When it comes down to it, I have to be partisan in the end. Because there are people out there who think that everyone wants and needs the same things in life, and they want to choose my way of life for me. Fanatical Christians want me to believe everything their church teaches and follow their particular rules of morality that have no actual secular purpose. And every time they put one of their doctrines into law, I see red. A few times I've gotten such a rush of rage it's made me dizzy. The government wants to get into unnecessary wars, treat foreign conflicts as simple when they're really complex, make new enemies for our country, and basically f--- us all. How can we really unite when half of us want to lead this world to ruin and the other half want to save it? I think the reason Gulliver spent the last years of his life talking to horses was because he got fed up with how stupid people were. He just couldn't take it anymore.

And yes, it's a serious problem that schools don't teach critical thinking. That's why Bush got away with some of the worst, most bald-faced propaganda ever written.

Someone in a Poli-Sci class said that Network gets truer every year. I wish we could get a passionate, charismatic leader to get us mad about the important things. Unfortunately, we'd just end up with Howard Beale or Hitler that way.

I should start reading Chomsky.

Roger,

I also have worries about these very same issues. In my thoughts I'm always reminded of the writings of Vaclav Havel. I'm at work, and therefore can only quote what I can find on-line. But, I do remember clearly his thoughts on religion: As long as there is more than one organized religion in this world, there will be war. And, that one man's wealth/greed should never come before the good of the common people.

While these quotes have nothing to do with my remembered thoughts, here's a few that I've found that I think are appropriate:

"Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it."

"The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both."

Power struggles and greed will always be with us, I'm sure. I can only hope that we're not too late to stabilize the harm we're doing to our environment (at the VERY least). I'd like to think we have more time to figure out the hard parts - learning to accept each other on all levels and feeling free to give to each other for the good of ALL people. I suppose in reality, one will lead to the other.

I wish I could come up with a movie or quote a line. But there's so many! Alas, a mere tv show comes to mind. The Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man'. A clear respresentation of our willingness to jump to conclusions in order to get something we think we want. Greed. It'll be with us always.

Wishing you the best Roger, and to all the bloggers too!

kj

Three points:
1. Owning five acres and a gun (as opposed to a condo in the city) isn't going to help you if that family back in the city is starving. Because that starving family will eventually show up at your farm and offer to work for, or will beg for, a potato. And if you do not create a way for them to have a potato, they -- being starved and all -- will take a potato.
2. Therefore, the answer -- as always -- is education. Education that creates opportunities in the cities as well as education that teaches all of us how to grow our own potato. (I'm just guessing here, but I believe it is fair to say that most Americans presently know neither how to fix a car, write a book or grow a potato.)
3. I'm betting SOME of us are educated enough to lead us out of this. I'm also betting that there are already developed ways to do it. (Non-gasoline cars, for instance.) And when will non-gasoline cars be the norm? When it is profitable for GM or Exxon to make said cars. (As it stands now, what is their motivation for change? Where is their profit? Where is our motivation and profit in keeping our nose out of the middle East?)
At which time cars will magically run on non-gasoline. Maybe even on potatoes.
And your new-found skill as a capable potato-grower will come in mighty handy.

Ebert: As a deliberate result of WTO policies, the sweet potatoes of Jamaica and the onions of Bermuda were driven off even their local markets and replaced by American surplus, freeing more farmers to work for such as Fruit of the Loom factories behind barbed-wire fences that were union-free zones.

The growing sense of dread has been around for quite some time. Seeing in the everyday how completely senseless people have become - on every level - it was never a difficult conclusion to reach.

Of course the humans as a species will survive. But would any of you here like to sacrifice yourself and your children for it? And I don't mean giving up a few toys, dinners, or regular trips to the mall. If you were raised to value education, respect others, trust science and the unstoppable drive in people to tinker and improve on things, as I was, it comes as a very hard blow to realize that it won't do much good when it comes to a bag of flour being divided up between hundreds or thousands. Will it get that bad? It might.

In the meantime, the legal system honours bonuses and pay-offs, but fails to acknowledge that once enough people lose their jobs, the options left to them are everything but legal. The prices have not come down, the rents are unaffected, the leases won't budge, the financial breaks that will make a real difference in people's everyday lives don't happen. They seem to be above the sentiment of doom. They follow the bottom line. Even when it all hits the bottom.

We, as a species, have gone through this before? Yes, but never with the population of this size. Not even half the size.

I agree with the person above - I have a child to raise, I can't afford to be gloomy. She is being raised to value education, respect others, and trust the great abilities of the human spirit to reach further and do better. All following that good old one: you can't go on without a little truth and a hearty serving of illusion.

I sincerely hope that the financial crisis marks the end of the culture of corporate greed and the minority of smirking CEOs who strongly believe that they deserve $100 million a year. When Enron fell and Skilling and Lay fell with it, that made me think of the old but relevent cliche, you live by the sword, you die by it. The world has to think how much longer it wants to live by the sword.

As a Canadian, I'm content that the next U.S. President is competent, focused and intelligent. It's a bad idea to think that Mr. Obama is some sort of Superman who can fix America's problems in four, or maybe, eight years. But at least his sense of leadership is a good start. His radio address where he emphasized the important of science was very refreshing to me after eight years of America being led by an arrogant man who based his decisions on his own personal faith. George Bush's faith should be nobody business but his own but he injected it into his doctrine making everything worse. I'm sick and tired of powerful people believing that personal faith justifies their monumental decisions that affect the world.

Mr. Ebert, don't you think that empathy has become a dying virtue? I believe empathy is a major part of seeking solutions to these crises. I also believe that many world leaders lack it.

A few years before Freud died, he published his masterpiece, "Civilization and Its Discontents." In 1939, Freud died. He lived through the First World War, which no one thought could be topped, and he died on the eve of the Second World War, which was twice as bad as the First. Near the end of his life, the brilliant Sigmund Freud, who spent so much of his life trying to understand how humans behave and why, became cynical about humanity and its fate. And rightly so. Look at the time he died. Imagine the whispers about the future's uncertainty in 1939.

But the world did go on.

Do you really, really think its gonna be so bad?

I wish I could wager that it won't, but you'll never know.

A few years ago, PBS held a round table of intellectuals that included Freeman Dyson.

They talked of God and life and death and the terrors of our time.

Dyson didn't say much until the group began to rank where humanity stood today from a historical standpoint. To paraphrase the question: How close to the edge are we?

Dyson finally spoke, again paraphrasing, saying that he had survived WWII, that the skies of the world were on fire at that time and we've never been closer to the edge than at that moment in history.

Roger, what a bunch of bleeding heart liberal dribble. I don't understand why liberals like you hate America so much.

Ebert: I fail to understand why this entry is liberal, or why you think I hate America.

While Children of Men may be a suitable film reference for our future, a more appropriate and depressing source of understanding our times is The Wire. No other text better explains our current condition and the fact that we may be incapable of digging ourselves out of this mess. And the kicker is that David Simon and company (writers, actors, directors, etc. all deserve props for this masterpiece) were describing America BEFORE the sh*t really hit the fan.

To your comment on comment Roger:

Yes, American education is horrid and it's one of the roots of the problem. American schools churn out more and more undereducated students every year and become more and more mechanical. And they're not even good at being mechanical! They turn out students who barely understand algebra and the basic sciences!

But, by far the most important thing a school should do is instill a sense of wonder and curiosity in the students (cliche but true) along with a firm understanding of the scientific method and a critical mind. A generation of well educated citizens got us to the Moon, cured Polio, and ended segregation. Education is the greatest investment any nation can make and we have totally failed, we're just paying the price now: Zombies who don't care make lousy citizens.

I'm actually reminded of Winter Light more so than Children of Men. We are on the brink of many changes going on, good or bad, and not knowing the outcome is unbearable. I have no way of cheering you up, so I will just quote Stanley Kubrick:

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

Roger, you are similar to most Americans. Every time this country enters a rough patch you think everyone is doomed and we're all going to die. You are like my great uncle who in the 1950's built a bomb shelter because he was convinced that the cold war between the u.s. and the soviet union would lead to a nuclear holocaust within 5 years. Americans always do this. During the Great Depression people were convinced our system had failed and some in the country were calling for a dictator to fix the economic problems. In 1982, when unemployment was 11 percent, everyone in the country was saying that our economy would never recover. One year later the economy rebounded and we had the largest peacetime economic expansion in American history during the 80's. In the 90's we had an even larger expansion.
Also, when it comes to global warming you are overly pessimistic. We have a new president and a democratic congress who are committed to fighting global warming. We can solve the problem. You are wrong that we have damaged the planet beyond repair and that "freak weather" proves this. I live in Rhode Island. We very rarely get hurricanes up here but if we do they are weak. In 1938, a strong Category 3 hurricane hit Rhode Island and devastated the state. It left the entire downtwon area of Providence submerged under 15 feet of water. Tornadoes are also very rare in the New England area. However, in 1953 one of the strongest and deadliest tornadoes in American history hammered Worcester, Massachusetts-just north of my state. If you were writing all those years ago, would you call that "freak weather" proof that we have damaged the planet and are all going to die? Don't be so gloomy Roger. We will get out of this rough patch. We have faced much tougher challenges before in our history and have always solved them. We will solve this too.

Today i watched "The Best Years of Our Lives" ... very inspirational,made me ponder a lot.

Goddamnit! Lets put our pants back on and do something about it.

Yep, people just don't see it as real. What's the answer to all of the world's problems? Just cheer up buddy!... as many commenters suggest to you. Anyway, if you're anything like me, you can acknowledge the approaching doom, try to do something about it and not be down in the dumps over it. Someone who can admit the world's problems is someone who is living truly- as opposed to living a lie, willfully ignorant. Rather to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, right? No offense to pigs.

Incidentally I work for an Amish farmers' co-op in Lancaster County, PA. All organic food. I feel pretty good about my personal situation. That is... unless Three Mile Island melts down the whole way next time.

I just finished reading "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler this weekend, and I have to say I was already feeling the exact same way from it as what you express here. It is very much a feeling that we're trapped in a hole of our making -- and that we're still digging while pretending we're going to come out on top of the world.

I can't claim any answers, and like you I hope to be proved wrong. But, sadly, I don't expect to be.

Dear Roger,

I read with great interest your blog. My mood mirrors yours, we are of the same era and generation. Two nights ago, when I had trouble sleeping I came across an article from the LA TIMES about the demise of quality film criticism and a recollection of another time, in another galaxy, when you and Gene burst forth on the TV screen with wit and great conversation about movies. Now we have the likes of "you know who" and his elk to dumb down the scene with the cult of celebrity and unformed ideas without the necessary appreciation for film making past and present

Your commentary about the contemporary state of society shatters one's illusions about our place in the world and forces one to think objectively that without a brain and a heart and an inherent will to make this world better, we are on a collision course toward an unthinkable destiny. Politics and religion and greed seem to blur the lines of intent and make for self centered visionaries who seem determined to uproot societies in order to push forward personal and national agendas.

Why do people wish to make points by citing age as a factor for a particular point of view? Illness, death of loved ones and the loss of physical beauty illustrates the fallacies of youth and to some degree puts one in touch with the necessity to nuture ourselves, our private as well as public universe. It is only when one is faced with the loss of the predictable in our lives; that the notion of public action enters the chambers of our mind, to thrust into consciousness the idea that "if not now, when"? Perhaps we can once more summon the courage for action and moral justicel

Roger, keep writing. You leave ideas which hopefully will inspire public service and action!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Judy Shuster

Do you think a complete reform of human civilization is necessary to avoid catastrophe? How would you accomplish that? Many of the wrongs we've consistently done are inspired by our nature.

I've been thinking lately about how unfocused human activity is. We do lots of things well, but rarely for a useful purpose. There isn't really a plan. People just do whatever.

ok, yes, we're all fucked, but take the long view. This is how I deal with my own anxiety about climate change: The Earth will survive. Life will survive. Once you get a few microbes going, there's really no way short of supernova to stop evolution; we might do ourselves in, we might change the climate and cause an Extinction Level Event*, but whatever is left will keep right on reproducing and genetically drifting and surviving and evolving. Take the long view, it looks better.

*My go-to depression movie: DEEP IMPACT. No matter what, when that wave comes down on them I start to bawl.

I have some website recommendations for you, alternative economic media that my family and I have been listening to for years:

http://www.jsmineset.com/

http://www.financialsense.com/

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/

As for Al Gore, I do not believe Global Warming is his fantasy, but I do believe it is his hotbed issue to draw more attention to such things from the minds of the so-five-minutes-ago crowd. He believes, as I do, that if we follow the outlines (environmental and economic) of the kind of living he proposes life would be better off for...all, I guess. But that doesn't necessarily prove that global warming is a reality. Have a listen to some older episodes of the Financial Sense Newshour (www.financialsense.com) with Jim Puplava in particular to see why I believe this.

Hi, Roger.

I've been a lifelong science fiction reader. I gave most of it up about 15 years ago. Almost all stories that were set in the near future were very depressing and down-beat. They portrayed a dystopic future that humanity was approaching, almost unconsciously. And indeed, John Raulston Saul's "The Unconscious Civilization" pretty much sums up that impression.

We have reason to be concerned (or more). Those of us with kids have reason to fear for their futures. Humanity will eventually wake up, and respond. The question is when and how. If we can avoid blowing ourselves up, we may find ourselves engaged in a "Manhattan Project"-style initiative of global scope, and everything...everything might be subordinated to success in that project. It's a glass-half full scenario, but one that holds promise for the future.

Ebert: Well, at least your optimism doesn't depend on optimism.

Remember Churchill's victory, victory, victory speech. As they say, if you think you can, you can: if not you are right. Ten thousand Americans have proven that. The human being is the greatest resource. Defeat and victory reside nowhere but in the human heart. Optimism leads to activism. The great optimist Gandhi was a great activist. Human beings are not puppets of destiny but architects of destiny.

Gandhi, when asked what he thought about modern civilisation famously quipped that he thought it's a good idea. Civilisation and it's opposite barbarism are latent potentials in each person. We are man and beast in one. People are the cause and people will be the solution. The great teaching of the Lotus Sutra says that each person without exception is the vessel wherein Satan and the Buddha co-habit. The Buddha was not a wooly "spiritualist" preaching incomprehensible abstractions in a bucolic setting--he is an involved warrior who sets out with iron determinism and responsibility to win, no matter what. How to bring out great goodness rather than the worst is the challenge. Ours is an age requiring great philosophy, great wisdom. We need a new axiom.

It's not the government. It's us, babe.

Well then, Mr. Ebert, is Ragnarok nigh?

Ebert: Come on, now, at least leave me Thor and Odin.

Coincidentally, today I happened to read a set of your articles concerning Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then I went about my business, and when I returning I discovered your doomsday screed and immediately thought back to Kubrick's sequential masterworks. One presents humanity's sad, thoughtless end, the other presents a future rich in possibility and intellectual evolution. How strange that they were made one right after the other?

Back to the topic at hand, I find that I'm optimistic about humanity at large, but pessimistic about humanity at the personal level. I don't own a car, so tend to travel via public transit like a good earthling, and I can't help but notice that humanity seems to be crumbling. All it takes is a bus ride to remind me that we have become cold and thoughtless, utterly drowned by hubris and ego. We're in a vicious cycle. We consume products madly, spurred on by advertising and the hopeless desire to have that new Ipod, yet it is this cycle of planned obsolescence that keeps our economy in the black.

We, as Americans, are self-satisfied pod beings. We should be driving tiny ultra-fuel efficient cars, but nobody buys them because they don't want to look like sissies. The average American would rather ride around in a hulking Escalade instead of a four seat 60-mpg bubble car. The Europeans have conquered their fears, so why can't we? Probably because having a bigger ride, a bigger house, and a bigger bank account is what practically everyone strives for.

Capitalism is based on competition, but we've driven our society straight into the ground, morally and economically. I'm not advocating Communism here, but as people have said before, we need to band together as a species. And this includes Americans as well as the rest of the world, but mainly Americans, because we have been the symbol of power and superiority for the past century or so, and now we stand on the brink of fall.

This isn't the fall of our society in the financial sense, I'm sure we'll recovery. Economics works cyclically. We'll be back and spending too much in no time. And through our recovery, we set ourselves up for the fall again, because we will return into our little cocoon. It feels strange bringing the so-called degeneration of movie criticism into this discussion, but I think that it's an apt metaphor for the atmosphere of apathy and consumption. Just like our monetary distribution is horrifically polarized between a few rich and many poor, so is our intellectual facility. We have a small group of enlightened people (scientists, political analysts, researchers, artists, critics, etc) into which we put all of our trust, while the populace at large is generally ignorant and apathetic.

And when the going gets tough, we run to the brilliant men of our society and demand a solution, a miracle cure so to speak. And when they nod their heads and say "we're working on it" we become angered and disillusioned and totally oblivious to the fact that we must own up to our own flaws and miscalculations. We trusted our banks with our money and with our loans, and when it all went to hell, we chose to blame the economy, instead of the fact that no healthy economy can sustain so many people living on loans and credit cards.

Putting one's faith in a charismatic leader like Obama is understandable, but one must understand that he's not a miracle worker. The only way for our world to improve is if we cooperate and do our part. He'll go out and argue against war and genocide and hopefully get somewhere so that the world doesn't truly end with a period, but at home, it's all on our shoulders.

Returning to the pair of films I mentioned in the first paragraph, I'd like to sum up my thoughts on the general state of humanity, which is really what's in question here. Yes, we are technologically brilliant beings, endowed (even in the dullest specimens) with a cerebral power that might be the most advanced, and in fact the only intelligence in the Universe. Arthur C. Clarke once said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I'm staring at a box with lights inside that is able to communicate this message to every reader that happens to find this blog. If I showed this to the Judges at the Salem Witch Trials, they would see fit to cast a hex on me.

And secondly, we are brutal, uncouth creatures who turned the single most incredible innovation in the history of mankind into a device that could wipe us off the planet in a matter of seconds. So we placed our faith in science. Science gave us plenty of good stuff, along with the atomic bomb. Science works when it's at the service of our desire for self-preservation. Unfortunately, our greed and desire for power snuck into the equation and consequently, we spent the greater part of the 20th century doing nuclear drills in our classrooms (I'm sure you remember these).

This is the essence of our species and what we need to change. If we want to survive the next 100 or so years, we need to make the best possible use of our technology and our intellectual innovation. Splitting the atom was a great idea. Capitalism was a great idea. Democracy was a great idea. Internal combustion was a great idea. Gunpowder for christ sake's was a great idea. Why are they screwing us in the back now?

Maybe you're right. Maybe "On the Beach" will happen after all - in one form or another. Maybe it is just in our nature to destroy ourselves. We're sure trying our hardest, that's for sure.

Roger you quoted Yeats. But I couldn't help but thinking of this quote...

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Chilling.

Ebert: Same poem, of course. No more water, but the fire next time.

We should be lucky to have been hit so quickly by the financial crisis. It is causing people to re-examine their lives and their purposes in life. This is the best possible thing that could have happen before the obvious (and possibly irreversible) effects of global warming will take head.

This isn't about too many people or finding the right technology to maintain our previous trajectory of living. Humanity needs to learn to restrain its desires in order to survive over the long term. To go back to the heady optimism of the 1990's or even a few years ago is to return to an endless craving for an empty reality, constantly dreaming of self-gratification and manufactured lies to support our egos (e.g. mainstream Hollywood).

I understand that things look like they suck from a mindset of the past. It appears to me that you are still looking at the future with the values of the past. We need to embrace a future where we have transcended selfishness and egoism and delusions (about what life is).

If I may draw from Viktor Frankl, at least if we are (metaphorically) headed for the gas chambers and totally doomed, can we still hold our chins up as we step forward into extinction? Can we at least make the moral choice of not digging our own graves? If there is nothing left but a horrible fate, then at least we can try to live out the remaining time fostering peace, justice and universal love, the finest achievements of mankind.

I am also reminded of the Day After Tomorrow, where the British professor trapped in the weather station was asked what should be done. He had accepted his fate and his concern turned to others, "Save as many as you can."

We may not prevail, but we're already here so we may as well try to live.

Thanks Roger, for giving a voice to my own thoughts and feelings of late. Your writing in this piece is like the music of the church bells at noon--clear and resonant and sad. I hope everyone hears.

Roger, with almost every movie review you write you make careful observations on the humanity of the plot or in the characters. Your reviews bring out the hope of a movie, even when the movie is not about hope at all. But this entry seems to have none -- hope that is. What happened?

And what's the name of the sci-fi story you mentioned above?

Ebert: I'm not hopeless. My fingers are crossed. The story doesn't have a name because I haven't written it yet.

I just finished grading the last batch of papers for a three-week "mini-term" course I taught down here at Knox College, "The Gothic in Film"--and, given your dire posting, it appears I've prepared my students well. They wrote about the inevitability of evil (The Shining), the terror that comes with a loss of control (Them!), the dire price of ambition and egoism (Cronenberg's The Fly), and the despair of innocence violated (The Exorcist)--along the way noting the "passionate intensity" of the worst (A Clockwork Orange) and the "rough beast" whose hour has come (Nosferatu).

At home today, though, my wife and I watched Shadowlands. I wish I had invited my students over, to remind them of the pain now being part of the happiness then, and vice versa. "That's the deal," as Joy tells C.S. Lewis--who somewhere or other, musing on the typical state of things, reminds us that "we are living in enemy territory." That line came to me while reading your piece; and I'm not sure if the team of Ebert & Lewis is comic or tragic, but either is better than the lukewarm.

Have a Better New Year, Roger.

Action always helps more than just sitting there. One blog that I have been reading for a year or so has helped find ways to prepare for the hard times wherever you are; city or country. Her name is Sharon Astyk and she is a Jewish farmer & writer. Most of her solutions are low tech and are about not waiting for some new gadget to save us. Her blog is at http://sharonastyk.com/ . This past year, one of her projects with other bloggers is Riot for Austerity http://www.riot4austerity.org/blog/ . It is about about getting your energy down 90%. There are 7 areas to work on: transportation, electricity, heating, garbage, water, consumer goods, and food. I hope this helps the discussion and gives everybody something to think about and do.

Your piece reminds me a bit of Dr. Falken's speech from WarGames

Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David.

Was he right? Who can say? Vonnegut was, though

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Roger, have you seen this? It's actually a featurette from "Children of Men"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO4aH5ZSb_o

It could serve as something of a response to your questions.

I would not disagree that things seem bleak, but it is still important to create categories for the many insomnia-inducing questions you raise here.

One thing you are talking about is the likelihood that American dominance will diminish somewhat, particularly in the short term. If Obama and his successors can return something of our productive capacity, however, that could change. But certainly in the next few years, we should all be ready to adjust our lives.

Adjust. Live differently. Not necessarily move to a farm and check out. But one thing that people could do in terms of economics is live within their means. Consume less. Stop buying crap they don't need. That dimension of American culture will likely change dramatically.

In terms of the environment, we may well be screwed. But there are myriad ways of slowing what is happening, and those are what we should be concerned about-- not giving in to an apocalypticism that renders us powerless and comforts us that there is nothing to do. Every one of us is in part responsible for what is happening, and therefore must take seriously the possibility of doing something about it, right down to using different light bulbs, recycling, etc.

In terms of nuclear weapons, Roger, people have thought that End was around the corner for the last sixty years. We made it. Honestly what's the point of worrying what -could- happen? You have to deal with what -is- happening. I do trust that Obama will push diplomacy instead of bellicosity in the coming years, and that should be a source of some comfort.

Hope is important. Hope based in and leading to action, from the everyday level to the global, is better.

It has been observed that humans resemble no other life form on Earth so much as a cancer. In our process of just trying to live the way we like, we trample and kill off and ruin everything in our wake, including the land beneath our very feet, and have done so since the beginning of human history. There are great tracts of land on this planet that have been barren now for thousands of years, that were originally fertile farmland until humans worked it to death. I sometimes wonder whether the epidemic of cancer we live with (stats: chance of developing cancer in one's lifetime is now 1 in 3 for men, 1 in 2 for women) is simply an irony, or an attempt by nature to show us the error of our ways. Either way, we are thick-headed and slow to learn. We think our overspecialized brain makes us special, but it merely makes us especially stubborn and superstitious and self-righteous.

C'mon, a bit of perspective here. The weather isn't THAT bad; there are periodic Chinese floods that devastate millions of lives. And given that our population centers are in natural disaster zones, I think our record there has been pretty moderate, all things considered.

Maybe we should wait a year or so before proclaiming the death of our economy?

Things don't look good in the short term, but I think that predicting the end of the world as we know it is just unwarranted pessimism.

Roger, have you seen this? It's actually a featurette from "Children of Men"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO4aH5ZSb_o

It could serve as something of a response to your questions.

I would not disagree that things seem bleak, but it is still important to create categories for the many insomnia-inducing questions you raise here.

One thing you are talking about is the likelihood that American dominance will diminish somewhat, particularly in the short term. If Obama and his successors can return something of our productive capacity, however, that could change. But certainly in the next few years, we should all be ready to adjust our lives.

Adjust. Live differently. Not necessarily move to a farm and check out. But one thing that people could do in terms of economics is live within their means. Consume less. Stop buying crap they don't need. That dimension of American culture will likely change dramatically.

In terms of the environment, we may well be screwed. But there are myriad ways of slowing what is happening, and those are what we should be concerned about-- not giving in to an apocalypticism that renders us powerless and comforts us that there is nothing to do. Every one of us is in part responsible for what is happening, and therefore must take seriously the possibility of doing something about it, right down to using different light bulbs, recycling, etc.

In terms of nuclear weapons, Roger, people have thought that End was around the corner for the last sixty years. We made it. Honestly what's the point of worrying what -could- happen? You have to deal with what -is- happening. I do trust that Obama will push diplomacy instead of bellicosity in the coming years, and that should be a source of some comfort.

Hope is important. Hope based in and leading to action, from the everyday level to the global, is better.

Depends quite-a-bit on the movies we paint, methinks.

Sir; I find you a sage, dude. As a high school student, I've been acquainted with your material for a short time, but digging into your back-catalogue of reviews has been great fun and your blog is a pleasure to read. This is pretty much the first time I've ever commented on a blog, and I have only one question:

Why is there so much wrong in the world? Why do people turn an ignorant, closed eye to atrocities such as modern censorship, global warming, and all the various crises of the world with people dying of hunger, malnourishment, and genocide? Why does our government, in its infinite power (but all too finite wisdom) not reach out and lend a helping hand, or at least a helping dollar? It confuses the living heck out of me. I'm not saying we should be altruists for altruism's sake, but for the sake of all the people of the world and for our planet's progress as a whole, I guess... Why is it that power and influence seem to vary inversely with care for our planet--for its people and its wellbeing? Why are there no great thinkers anymore? What happened to our poets? Why is everyone pining for the past and not helping to build a better future? Who cares if you're Republican or Democrat? Why is greed so rampant? Is it really that satisfying? We're becoming increasingly distrusting of each other, increasingly disillusioned with this beautiful universe around us, and it's becoming more and more of a chore to see the light at the end of this dark, dank, ever-elongating tunnel. In my short time on this planet, it seems we all have gone nowhere but downhill. Of course I cannot trust my childhood memories of this earth, so someone please answer me this: has it always been this way? I am deathly curious. Is it supposed to look this bleak? Am I taking these things to seriously? Better pessimistic than Panglossian, I should think.

Ebert: I have no answers. But it seems to me that one underlying cause of many of our problems is tribalism. Identification with a tribe evolved as a necessary step in the formation of civilization. But the need for such identification almost seems hard-wired, apart from immediate uses for it. This, for me, explains much of the phenomenon of fandom. Some people define themselves that way: "I'm a Cubs fan." They find or create a tribe to identify with. More fundamental fandoms are defined by nationality, ideology, religion, ethnicity and language. People will fight and die to advance such tribes. Somehow mankind must find a way to deal with this. Empathy is a cure few populations seem willing to practice.

I don't feel too scared about China. They're loosening up the shackles on trade because, well, they've realized that they're all going to die if they don't meet the rest of the world halfway.

As for everything else, uh... Tom Waits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgeZEdbv_m8

Call me an optimist, but I can't agree with the fatalism. When things get tough, I fall back on four simple words.

This too shall pass.

Regarding the economy, this too shall pass. We have tough times right now, and the debt is large but not exceeding the gross domestic product. The executive compensation is wrong, and I would like that changed, but much like the sports market, talent goes to the highest bidder. People will start doing business again, and this recession will return to growth within a couple of years.

Regarding global warming, this too shall pass. It may be happening, and we may be a small part of it (see http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/nowarm.htm). We are also expecting an Ice Age in the next 1000 years (if we make it that far). No matter what happens, we will adapt, as we always have.

I do share your fear of nuclear war, if that happens, we will pass after the fallout does. My only consolation is that even the most fervent dictator knows he/she is cutting their own throat. I wish for the day when all the weapons are deconstructed, and the material is made into nuclear fuel and burned to nothing. Even if it happens, if there are more than 100 survivors, we would rebuild.

As Michael Moore noted in Bowling for Columbine, 'if it bleeds it leads.' I understand the source of fear. But as I'm expecting my first child, I can't help but believe that the people of this world are better than the headlines, that we will still remain, for a while, a strong society that grows, lives, and loves regardless of the borders until the timeline is long enough such that we reach our extinction.

Because after all, this too shall pass.

Reply to: Ebert: How will he bring world peace between peoples who have hated each other for decades? If you are a member of the U.S. Congress, you should...be listening to the best counsel of the wisest people you can find. This is no time for playing to the crowd. That is all over with. This is the hour to seek what might lead us back from the brink.

I don't think it takes a genius to figure out the answer.

If we do nothing, global population will rise to 9.5 billion about 2060.

I'm talking about three billion people who haven't been born yet.

Is the human race unable to comprehend the words "nine billion people"?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1194030.stm

BBC: The number of people living in the 48 least developed countries in the world is expected to triple by the year 2050, according to the latest United Nations projections.

The population of the world is now just over 6bn.

The latest UN figures predict that by 2050 it will be 9.3bn - up from their previous prediction of just under 9bn.

The annual world population growth rate is 1.3% - about 77m people a year. Six countries - India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia - account for half that total.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/06/the-depopulatio.html

Human fertility has been dropping for years and is now below replacement levels - the minimum required to prevent depopulation - in scores of countries, including China, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, and all of Europe. The world's population is still rising... But with far fewer children being born today, there will be far fewer adults bearing children tomorrow. In some countries, the collapse has already begun. Russia, for example, is now losing 700,000 people a year. By mid-century, the UN estimates, there will be 248 million fewer children than there are now.

So, the question is, what should humanity do about this? As a group?

What will be the consequences of "the number of people in least-developed countries" growing by... well, there will be three people living where one person lives today. On about the same amount of land, food and clean water, because those things are not going to increase.

The least we can do is ask whether there's a sensible way to hold the world's population at its' current level.

Reply to Lear:

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Sir Winston Churchill,1941

Gandhi's optimism too was based on such unwavering inner resolve. Impossiblity is a relative term.

"I remain an optimist, not that there is any evidence that I can give that right is going to prosper, but because of my unflinching faith that right must prosper in the end." (Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers.- Autobiographical Reflections New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1990, pp. 70-71.)

http://www.daisakuikeda.org/index.php?mid=resources&sub=works&sub2=lect&quid=8

Hi Ebert,

I just love you. I probably won't meet you in person, so I wanted to say it now. I'm glad you're around.

You know what, I have been SO down hearted about the state of the world ever since George Bush was elected the first time, especially after 9/11. But now I'm feeling better. So many people are doing so much to turn systems that haven't been working for a long time around. This really could be the start of a better way of functioning.

Also, there have been worse times. WAY worse. So many times of cruelty and darkness and rampant disease through human history. In recent times, there was Great Depression, I think there was 40% unemployment! It seems a foregone conclusion that they would get through it but I've read that at the time people really worried that the great expiriemnt called the United States of America was over. It wasn't.

I think democracy will out, and will get better, but it will take courage and OPTIMISM! So, don't be afraid, think of solutions, participate, and create bonds with your fellow beings. Get to know your neighbors. Seriously, a neccesity and benefit of hard times is help from neighbors.

I used to think of England as a boring country. (Sorry, England) But then I read about how they took down all of their street signs during World War II so if the Germans invaded they would get lost, they hid underground, they were so freaking hardy and brave. We are not in that desperate of straights. It's not time to get scared. It's time to get hardy and very civic minded.

With absolute fan love,
Braidwood

Environmental law is in fashion these days. Under-graduate law is tedious but once you're past all of that suddenly there seems to be this awakening in young lawyers about the power they might yield and the battles they might win. If only there was a little more courage and a little more adventure.

It took me three years to get my mother to sit down and watch "Tsotsi.". "What are you, racist?" I asked. "No. It just doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to see any heart wrenching film. What is it about?" I told her, "It's about doing what is right." Tonight, she relented. It was my third time watching it.

SPOILERS:

Hate to cry in front of family. I swallowed and breathed deeply, holding back. A boy who has lived his life as a thug, has changed. That gate in front of the house... it is the gate to the prison he has been living in. They open it up for him. He returns the baby, and he is released from his dark, horrible cell. The police car lights shine on his face. He will go to a "real" prison. But he is free. His hands lift into the air, not because he is asked to lift them three times, but because he needs to lift them. He is not sentenced for life, he has restored his own life. The way his arms lift into the air... it breaks my heart, and fills me with hope.

My mother's response? Quiet. Quiet. "That was a very deep movie."
I can stop badgering her now.

While every generation thinks it is facing doomsday, this is the first generation that is actually facing it.

Dear Mr. Ebert:

I have certainly thought along the lines you have about the future of this country and this world, and have at those times found myself paralyzed in fear and depression. And I think that overwhelm and paralysis is a common reaction to the state of the world, or a simple refusal to look at any more news (aka: avoidance). Currently my mantra seems to be "I Don't Know". I don't know what will happen, really; I find myself without any firm belief in ultimate disaster or salvation at this point. Maybe we, the human race, are still determining our "fate"? I see people here mention staying connected, enjoying the arts, taking action to help ensure our survival all as possible strategies to cope, or help... Again, I don't know what should be done, or even really what I should do much of the time. Uncertainty brings paralysis sometimes, but less than the certainty of doom brings, for me at least.

For what it's worth (and not to get into religious or spiritual beliefs or non-beliefs), there is a Zen Buddhist teacher that's started something interesting - maybe a small step out of the paralysis and overwhelm. The suggestion is focus on/commit to doing just One Thing (whatever the thing is is up to you - big or small) to help improve the world and your life, and send in a 5 second video of yourself commiting to the thing. "onething is whatever you want it to be. It might be using cloth bags at the grocery store, not driving one day a week, reading a story to a child, or smiling at a stranger. "
http://www.youtube.com/onethingrevolution
Their point of view is that inner peace begets world peace, and compassion for yourself ultimately extends to compassion for everyone/thing around you. Will it lead to more awareness of how we use and misuse our resources? Will it lead to bigger actions? Will it really change anything? i don't know (again). I do know I like the idea and feel a step in the right direction - even an incredibly small one - is still a step.

Many thanks for all your writings and insights. I was lucky enough to take a couple of your film classes at the U of C extension decades ago (around '78-80 maybe?). I loved living in Chicago, and you were always one of my favorite things to have discovered there. Peace, health and a Happy New Year to you!

Time to move to Canada! (I kid - wait until we've rid ourselves of Mister Harper first.)

For once, it appears that having no savings and no investments and nothing resembling a traditional 'career' might actually prove to be an advantage in these dark days. Being Canadian helps in terms of health care and our social safety net, but may become a disadvantage as far as the length of our growing season is concerned. Potatoes for everyone!

Two books have given me hope. One is 'Deep Economy', which describes how an economy based on durability rather than endless growth could actually make us happier, and 'The Transitions Handbook', which outlines some very specific steps that individual communities can take to wean themselves off of fossil fuels and imported food and make themselves more sustainable and resilient.

We can only hope that our respective governments will take action to make the coming transition to a post-carbon world easier, but ultimately it falls to us to choose whether this crisis will bring out the best or the worst in human nature. We can either retreat to our respective bunkers, or we can use this as an opportunity to rebuild our local communities and re-affirm our responsibility to one another.

I choose the latter.

I watched "Children of Men" last Saturday. Although we didn't have flu epidemic mentioned in the movie this year, this bleak, sterile world in the movie seems more real than when I saw in last January. "No Country for Old Men" also becomes more real to me. People are killed regardless of whether they deserve or not. While the world is going into chaos, "Prophet of Destruction" is ironically only one we can be sure about. This is bleak world with twisted sense of humor. And that is not far from our world. 9/11 seems like just the prelude for darker time, and the things happening around us are beyond great satirists (I heard Vonnegut seemed depressed about that before his death). They would be very funny if we were outside. We're not, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, there is some hope and possibility. Human nature can't be changed, but people are capable of anything, better or worse. (Noah Cross in "Chinatown" was right about that. He would be very amused with LA citizens in "Crash") I'm usually cynical, but I hope this dialogue from "Futurama" will be just funny.

"This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened."

"Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter canceled it out."

So much pessimism. What's the worst that can happen? We all die.

Whenever I get down or read threads like this, I'm reminded of Alan Weisman's thought experiment of a book, "The World Without Us," in which he explores what would happen to all of our buildings, infrastructure, and artifacts. His verdict is that we are much less destructive than we pessimistically delude ourselves into thinking; or rather, that nature's capability for self-renewal is much greater than we give it credit for.

No measure of comfort, most likely, to those who find themselves living in the end times of man; but perhaps, a bit of hope.

John -

Re: Books on Global Warming

The best book to start off with is the classic Global Warming: The Complete Briefing by John T. Houghton. It's a bit dated now, obviously - but the theory is there, and it's presented with clarity, and wit. Mr. Ebert mentioned the brilliant The Ancestor's Tale a few weeks ago as a beautiful account of evolutionary theory. Well, this book is not quite that exquisitely written, but it is equally illuminating.

Once you're through with that, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations by Eugene Linden should be the next book on your list. It puts the subject in a historical perspective.

Finally, Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen. It's a tough one to get through, but, on the whole, it's probably the best book on the subject.

====

This is one of my favourite poems. It's somehow apt as humanity slouches towards Bethlehem:

RAIN
by Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me,
disappoint.

Here's the self-centered perspective of a seventeen-year-old:

I don't mind that the world is ending; the world ends more than a hundred thousand times each day. I am worried, however, that my own world will end. What comfort is it that the weather isn't as bad as it could be? Only two thousand dead in Katrina, when it could have been millions? Two thousand, two million, two: it's all the same. Fate could toss me out the window just as easily.

I don't want to be a statistic. I want to be a writer. I want to have sex with a girl I love. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to write a novel. I want to have some sense of completion, at least, before I die.

No one is so selfless as to be afraid that the world, as a whole, will end. What we're all afraid of is death, and now we have even greater reason to be afraid.

Ebert:
I don't want to be a statistic. I want to be a writer. I want to have sex with a girl I love. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to write a novel. I want to have some sense of completion, at least, before I die.

And right there is the plot outline for your novel.

You know, sometimes I secretly wish the world would go to hell in a handbasket. I think it would be interesting to see what happens if complete anarchy and total destruction reigned over all things. Maybe it's just that part of the brain that enjoys human suffering.
Children of Men, my favorite film so far this decade, recently took on a new meaning for me: What if nature herself was the reason we stopped having babies? Nature gets pissed because we're screwing up the planet so bad, and in one cut of the Gordian knot, she does something about it. It's an interesting thought in a world that is slowly going mad.
I have to be optimistic. I'm only 20 and Obama is in the White House, but representing a slew of minorities (gay, atheist, liberal, college student) it gets harder every day.

Your side has spent the past eight years accusing George Bush of every evil under the sun, of being Hitler, of being a war criminal, and now you want our side to just smile and hold hands. F**k you.

Ebert: Bush was not a good president. His own inner circle despaired. Now they are coming forward to speak.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/29/exaides-bush-never-recove_n_154119.html

The Saudi's, who are responsible for this economic meltdown as head of OPEC through cutting and increasing production of oil--mainly cutting--, are spreading their faith--Wahabism--, the most violently intolerant form of Islam (death or enslavement--of you name it, Christians, Buddhists--all of them etc.), through many front organizations and have 20,000 madrasses all over the world, not counting those in Saudi Arabia, including India, killing hindus there and Kashmir. The taliban was a Saudi project, where they have set-up 1,000 madrasses in Pakistan, which is what we are seeing on the news, teachin young boys the way to get to heaven is kill all the infidels. They are involved in Jihad activities in the following countries: Christians in Biafra and Nigeria, secular muslims in Algeria, coptic christians in Egypt, Blacks africans of various religions in Darfur in Sudan, Jews in Israel (also in the news), American troops and Shiite muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russian orthodox christians in former Soviet central asia, buddhists in Tailand and Indonesia--murderous, catholics in the Philipines. It is enormous with deaths in the millions from oil money. But the deaths from the economic side of the high oil price is actually in the hundred millions in third world countries from people who only make 1,000$ a year, and can't afford 150 dollars per barrel of oil that we saw this year. It kills them--they can't get their crops to the market--but on the surface it is seemingly only an annoyance to have to pay high gas prices to us, but it is actually bringing up the price of everything(food, anything that is transported)--also hurt the auto industry --, taxing us. We paid 900 billion this year on oil, which like a 40% increase in tax increase because it is 40% of what we pay the IRS--money that is being removed from our discretionary income--, up from 3% of a tax increase in 1999 when we paid only 80 billion that year on oil--at 11 dollars per barrel. Is it any wonder we aren't buying houses? That is what crashed the housing market, which crashed the mortgage market, which crashed the mortgage backed securites, which crashed the banks, which crashed the stores.

We need to mandate all cars sold be flex-fueled vehicles in the U.S. There is a bill in congress called the Open Fuel Standard Act, which mandates half of cars sold be flex-fueled vehicles by 2012, and 80% by 2014, which may change (it was 2013, then went up, which should change). Obama has an energy policy mandating 100% sold be flex-fueled by 2012: this will get it back on his radar. This should be a requirment as part of the auto-bailout coming up in March. We have 150 different engines in the U.S., and it would cost 1 million per engine to recertify them to be flex-fueled, which should be recertified for methanol, not ethanol as they are now for an extra 30 bucks in parts for a less corrosive fuel injector. This will cost only 150 million dollars to recertify the engines, and then the cost will be about 25 million per year. As long as they have our money, this should not even be asked of them at this neglible additional cost. This will set-up the incentive for the market to open up alcohol pumps all over the country at any pump that can afford it. The only matter is how fast, and if it isn't done fast enough, we could then subsidize them. And by the way, within 3 years, there will be 50 million (FFV) cars here, and hundreds of millions worldwide because the foreign auto-manufacturers are not going to walk away from a customer like the U.S., making Flex-Fuel Vehicles the international standard forcing competition at the pumps against oil protecting the world from arbitrary oil price hikes by OPEC.

The flex-fuel cars were invented for smog pollution, as methanol cars. Alcohol fuels contain zero carcinogens or mutagens and much less particulate emissions, or nox etc. Gasoline is heavily carcinogenic with aromatic compounds like benzene, which are heavily regulated in industrial areas, which we breathe all the time while filling up with gasoline fumes. Ethanol is edible., Methanol is not edible but is in trace amounts in fresh fruit, and aspartheme, the sweetener from diet soda, which becomes methanol in human body. Alcohol is water soluble meaning no environmental impact at all--no water pollution. If there were an alcohol spill it would biodegrade in a week, and maybe a few sea otters would be drunk. The seals are still dying from the exxon-valdez spill a few decades ago from eating clams with oil in them.

Alcohol is good for global warming, which very real, although also very slow. So we will need definitely need to get a hold on it (there was actually a shortage of CO2 pre-industrial revolution (280parts per milion of volume CO2) because of the evolution of grasses, which are much more efficient in their use of CO2 causing plants to tilt, and it is a fact that since NASA took pictures in 1958 (315ppmv), there has been a 14% vegetation growth on the planet, now at 375 ppmv),including wild plants that grow in the sidewalk etc). Talk about natural selection--without the industrial revolution, we would have been in serious trouble. But, In 100 years, we aren't going to flood anything because the sea level will rise possibly 1 foot (1 inche per decade). The temperature is also increasing at 2 degrees per century (.2 degrees a decade), so there is no climate emergency. In the 70's there was a small brief cold period and a lot of these same people that were once writing about an ice age before switched over to global warming now, when an ice was a little more sound in their thinking, which would kill billions--there is supposed to be one in 10,000 years roughly. But alcohol fuels will give us the way to get a handle on global warming through biomass, a renewable source of energy: photosynthesis circulating C02 in plants, half of it going into outer space. We can be global warming neutral through making methanol--which can be made from absolutely any biomass-- through trash (which might otherwise become methane--a terrible greenhouse gas). The dead trees from pine beetles could be used for methanol instead of burning it. The stranded natural gas that would be flared having no use as well. Coal is mildly less bad than gasoline, but if some ice age were coming, we could use coal to purposely heat the planet, or make methanol which coud easily be turned into dimethyl ether, a biodiesel for trucks,( but not good for planes, jets because it is heavier). We will have so much ethanol growing here too that our farmers couldn't handle the burden of energy independence, so we could drop trade barriers (we are taxing brazilian ethanol to keep it out of our country) and give the aforementioned third world countries a piece of the action, --perhaps half, which would funnel trillions of dollars worldwide to countries that are currently only get 60 billion dollars worldwide in aid--which would be better than selling citibank to saudi's, or time warner/aol--our media etc, as well as keeping the price of oil contained. Oil is something that you find and don't need the freedom of your country when you have it there. It is a limited resource which makes everybody the enemy of everybody, which the world might be tempted to invade a country for. Saudi Arabia has influence in Washington. Iran has influence in Moscow, which is why Russia won't drop sanctions letting us put a halt to their nuclear program. The Saudi want to kill Iran, and the Iranians can call on the Russians--let them make some nuclear weapons in the meantime while the U.S. and Russia are at their beck and call--two superpowers. And one day peak oil will come hundreds of years from now. If OPEC had another oil embargo, we might have to take military action and they know this, and what they are doing now is much worse: the slow strangle of keeping production low. With a limited resource you can't have peace and brotherhood, but with a renewable resource you can have peace and brotherhood because you need your citizens freedom and creativity.

I just watched "Slumdog Millionaire" with my family last night, which, while a very touching love story, was ultimately about survival, and what it takes to make it through the various hardships of live whilst maintaining one's humanity. My brother-in-law and I talked about it for over an hour last night, and kept coming back to it today. My mother and sisters were also very affected. It made me wonder just what our own society would resort to if faced with such an overwhelming population with no real resources available to get out of the mire. I would like to think that we'd do well, but there's no truly effective way of predicting human behavior.
Our beautiful, elegant planet has proven itself quite effective at removing troublesome species. Have we truly run into the end of our days, or is this just some overdue transition period that me must learn to adapt to? All I can say is that, while we may be sliding off the rails, we don't have to grease the skids any more than we already have.

For God's sake, there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki that marked the pinnacle of the Second War, and surely that generation must have felt even more despair? Somehow, the world muddled through, and there have been no further nuclear wars (at least.) Mr. Ebert, breathe easy, neither India, nor Pakistan will launch a nuclear war head. But surely, the real threat will be when you guys elect someone like W again in the White House. Hope that never happens. W has managed to single handedly cause a financial 'neutron bomb' explosion that has taken out (and eventually will take out) millions of people leaving behind empty office buildings in their wake. America has single handedly inflicted so much economic pain across the world, no one really has any energy to launch nuclear attacks.

Ebert: Not just Bush. The WTO and World Bank, in how they function, are hostile takeovers of third world economies.

Well, it's been a while since I've watched "Children of Men" although it was a great movie. Actually, I've spent the last few weeks watching my set of "Twin Peaks." I loved watching it on TV when it was on back in 1990-91 and it is (almost) as good as I remember. But, like so many things, it is better in memory than in reality. But, it got me thinking about events over the past few years. Much like Lynch set up events and gave us clues over many episodes, I think Bush and his cronies planned things out to happen over a period of time to get us to where we are today. Think of who has benefited over the past few years, and who continues to benefit from current events?

As for science being the cure, I often think back to the early 1960's(my parents' time) and how President Kennedy was able to lead this country by inspiring Americans to lead. And that is how I think Obama will ultimately succeed, by inspiring this generation of 20 and 30-somethings to get off their butts and finally do something. We have been pushed away from trying to lead by 'the old guys' who didn't want things to change. What new inventions have there been over the past 20 years? Nothing, really. Just small, incremental improvements on products that already exist. I absolutely believe that Obama will inspire a new generation to invent, to think, and to thrive. After Kennedy came "Star Trek" which inspired a generation of people and I hope something similar can happen to my generation.

Just a few random rambles from a 40-year who proudly works in the 'liberal media.' Mr Ebert, if you're feeling down, maybe you should take the advice from "Twin Peaks" and agent Dale Cooper. "Every day, for know reason at all and no planning...give yourself a present. Just something small, like a cup of strong, hot coffee." My suggestion for you is to visit Seattle this Spring and see whatever movie is showing at our Cinerama theatre. They just installed brand-new seats and they are far more comfortable than the old ones.

Good luck and keep smiling!

Ebert: In my present condition, I cannot drink. These comments are my coffee in the morning. Some of them raise my blood pressure more than fresh-ground beans.

Global warming is undeniable-it is scientifically measurable. That it is the result of mankinds actions is another matter. The Earth has warmed and cooled in thousands of cycles over billions of years before we were ever here, and will continue when we are gone. This quote from your blog begs a question:
"How well can he possibly "succeed" when so many of the problems, starting with the climate, cannot be cured by the actions of man?" If man cannot "cure" global warming, than how can he have caused it? Should we do all we reasonably can to become greener, to eliminate pollution? It is common sense that we should, but to think it will change the inexorable temperature cycles of our planet is just silly. As to the other points in your blog-the evil mendacity of some in our economy, wars, unstable governments-these are actions the direct result of mans actions, and thus can can be corrected by man. The solutions may be long and painful, but I remain optimistic that we will find a way to prevent self destruction.

Ebert: I am certainly not an expert. What I was fearing was that (a) global warming may be a self-reinforcing trend that beyond a certain point cannot be reversed by change in the causes that started it, or (b) society as presently organized cannot undergo change on the scale necessary to reverse it.

For some reason, I find the fact that you had to identify the Yeats quote profoundly dispiriting.

Eh, anybody who reads world history knows that as long as people could write they've been predicting world changing calamity sometimes correctly but most of the time incorrectly.

Didn't an industry that employed a third of Americans completely collapse causing several people to flee their home and live a vagrant life style in the thirties? Wasn't it in the forties when a maniac hell bent on conquering the world and killing everyone not like him was running one of the great world super powers? Wasn't it in the fifties that the clock was set to midnight? And hell that's only some of the shit that has happened in the past eighty years when we've been around as country for four times that long and as a race for 2500 times as long.

If we survived all that what's a financial bump in the road?

If they start giving out Pulitzers for most depressing blogs I think you might have another to mention in your review of Rob Schneider's next cinematic turd.

There is unbalance in the force and Obama is your Skywalker. Every time your country goes into a spiral a wise man comes along to lead the way. It is the ebb and flow of democracy. I wont say I have faith in humanity, but I do have faith in the universe. Even if, in a worse case scenario, our population is decimated, we will still survive and be "the eyes in which the universe sees itself."

By the way, is misanthropy a byproduct of old age?

Ebert: I think it peaks at about 17.

I was waiting for the political attacks to come before responding. I figured it would take about 24 hours for the dittoheads to re-write their talking points, dismissing global warming and the national debt as liberal codswallop.

A little about Yours Truly to illustrate where I'm coing from:
I play in a band in Southwest Michigan. Getting people to pay you money to perform on Saturday nights is hard. Bar owners don't care how good you sound. They care how many people you bring in. Realizing this, I had refrained from speaking publicly about my politics. Its just the way it is.

About ten years ago, I read an essay on the importance of civics. The free exchange of ideas is a foundation of our freedom. After reading the essay, I decided that I wasn't being a good American by not saying what I think. Being a good American is more important than having a gig every Saturday night. So I started saying what I thought. I joined the South Bend Tribune's political panel of concerned citizens this last year. Sure enough, the band started taking hits.

In continuing my commitment to encourage the free exchange of ideas, here goes:

There isn't a damned thing in Ebert's essay that isn't 100% true about the last eight years. We have doubled our national debt. The Administration, headed by the former heads of energy companies, pretty much ignored the ongoing threat of glogal climate change.

Consider where we were as a country in 2000. We had a budget surplus. We had friends around the world. Our Vice President had been speaking out about global warming for years.

In that year, a bunch of my friends on the left voted for Ralph Nader. I believe Ralph was right on the issues, but I lived (and continue living)in a swing state. I had read about George W. Bush's decision to greenlight more than 150 executions. I was appalled that this callous man could conceivably be President of the United States. I predicted the man who would laugh while mimicing a woman's plea to have her life saved would not be cautious before getting us into war. So I voted for Al Gore. Since that time, every Nader voter I've spoken to has expressed a wish that they had voted for Al Gore.

I can go one better than that, too. Nearly every Bush voter I've spoken to has wished they had voted for Gore. The calamaties described above will be written as having happened on George W. Bush's watch. What a colossal failure.

Global warming is real, and man may be accelerating it this go around. But obviously man had little to do with theeons of coolings and warmings out world has faced on the past. So saying that man is causing it may be shortsighted. Man certainly isn't helping things though. The larger problem on this planet is the scourge of human population. Our planet pretty much reeks of the human element.
Agent Smith, in The Matrix, had it pretty well nailed down; "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
What the planet needs is a deceleration of the human element to a level where it is sustainable.
Dr. Suess also had it right with The Lorax.
We bigger and bigger and bigger.
Perrhaps the current contraction in the global economy will trickle down to a contraction of human beings in the world.

Very thoughtful. You have an amazing gift which I have enjoyed for many years. One comment surprised me, though it shouldn't have I suppose and I have two thoughts in response.

Ebert: "I dreamed, we all dreamed, for years that the future held vague visions of progress and prosperity, and that our problems would be "solved" by science."

How does this kind of optimism- "faith" in science, utopianism- of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries still hang on after WWI?...and WWII and all conflicts since including an "irreconcilable difference" one has with a spouse or brother? The "myth of progress" can't seem to deal with evil, both intellectually and in practice (pace NT Wright, "Surprised by Hope"). Still the myth persists. Teilhard de Chardin believed elements of it though he was a stretcher bearer in the Great War. How did you come to have this faith in science?

Your language of dreaming took me immediately to a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who we soon remember on 15/19 January. He talked about a dream, and certainly worked for it, but it was not a dream that science and "human progress" would triumph all human ills. It was that the goodness and justice of the Lord would overcome the world's brokenness and be realized in his lifetime and beyond. That is a vision which prods us to action for the good of all people. Per his speech: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

Which vision offers real hope for the future?

Ebert: Both offer. We can hope the hope is real.

Dr. David Suzuki wrote a few months ago, observing how mankind lately has lost it's ability to adapt to its surroundings. His point (and I wish I could find the link to the article) was that as the world changed, we changed: evolving, surviving, growing stronger. That is, we used to. We don't anymore. In the face of all this alarming change, we are not adapting and the result is our survival at risk.

That sounds very alarmist.

But somebody has to raise the alarm though, a lot of someones, a lot of people like YOU, Roger (thank you), to engage the people over here in the cheap seats. Because what I think (since you didn't ask) is that we, Westerners at least, have become paralyzed by a grinding, collective sense of apathy, helplessness and futility. It's created this global inertia where a very large collection of John Q. Publics, fat, dumb and lazy, don't know (or want to know) how to get that Big Wheel started again to fix their society, fix their planet and save their species.

It's only alarmist if it's not true.

Ebert: Well, in evolutionary theory, that big wheel keeps on turning, even if proud Mary keeps on burning.

I tried to point out the danger from global warming in the 80s and was laughed at by my fellow physics students (strange - it's the simplest problem of physical chemistry - you take a sphere, cover it with a gas, and heat it up..) I suggested an immediate shift to nuclear power to avoid burning coal, and the enviro-zealots went mad and looked at me as if I were a genocidist. Today we have the triple fictions of dark matter, string theory, and inflation while the great ocean of truth drains through the hole in the bottom of the world into hell. Science has been bastardized into a new kind of religion, with a creation myth, a clergy, and scattered but entrenched idols who sit in unassailable majesty while facts and common sense go begging.

The human being of modern times, across all lands, is a pernicious, venal, destructive narcissist. There is no hope until that flaw is corrected - either by choice or by fate. It will certainly be the latter.

-drl

Thank you for another thoughtful post.

Everyday I hear about another person that I know getting fired. Some of those people have had those jobs for over twenty years, and have children to raise and mortgages to pay. At the age of 20, I'm going to live through all the depressing time ahead of us, and might not even be alive to see it improve.

Yes, because I believe it will get much worse before it gets better.

Ironically enough, I don't see people concerned about this "crisis". Malls are packed everyday, with people spending even money than in previous years. Displaying wealth that doesn't exist. Ignoring the companies closing down everyday and making mass lay offs.

If we want to see any improvement both in the Economy and the Environment, then the first thing to do is change people's mentalities. Somehow convince them to change their behaviour by spending less money in unnecessary things, depending less on technology for everyday life, polute less (less driving the car, more riding the bycicle, for a start) and think up of ways they can help change this situation. Sitting around waiting for someone else to solve all our problems won't do any good. Big change starts off with small actions by average people.

Reading through about half the comments, and Roger's response to them, I suddenly feel this is another test; like the original seemingly pro-creationist post. Who thinks Roger will post another blog in a few more days refuting this one, and revealing his mad scheme to the world?

Dear Roger

A timely article ! I am glad someone is worried about the state of the world, and although you are primarily a film critic, you have touched on issues that seems to have escaped most journalists and policy makers.

I am from India, and I can tell you the way things are going in the subcontinent now, unless something is done, and done soon, the next war that starts from there will be devastating for the world, thanks to the nuclear capabilities of both India and Pakistan. And frankly, considering terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda have their bases and allies all over South Asia and Middle East, one wonders how long it would be before some nuclear technology falls into their hands.

As you rightly pointed out, the environmental devastation going on now must be cause for concern, and one that is constantly overlooked. But I think the most important thing right now is to workout a strategy to ensure minimal conflict. If after 50 years of United Nations existence, wars are still the norm in this world I do not see how we have progressed as a collective society. And the US invation of Iraq, more than anything else has proved that the most powerful state in the world is not necessarily the most responsible. How can the US expect other countries to put trust in its mediation when its own foreign policy is morally compromizing? Such "Might is Right" attitude does not bode well, especially in the next century when the US will be joined on the table by other big powers like China and Russia.

My point is, if nations do not take steps to reduce conflict (Israel and Palestine, here here!), if governments do not start acting responsibly, then Mother Nature need not bother with doomsday. Man will orchestrate that on himself.

Dear Roger

A timely article ! I am glad someone is worried about the state of the world, and although you are primarily a film critic, you have touched on issues that seems to have escaped most journalists and policy makers.

I am from India, and I can tell you the way things are going in the subcontinent now, unless something is done, and done soon, the next war that starts from there will be devastating for the world, thanks to the nuclear capabilities of both India and Pakistan. And frankly, considering terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda have their bases and allies all over South Asia and Middle East, one wonders how long it would be before some nuclear technology falls into their hands.

As you rightly pointed out, the environmental devastation going on now must be cause for concern, and one that is constantly overlooked. But I think the most important thing right now is to workout a strategy to ensure minimal conflict. If after 50 years of United Nations existence, wars are still the norm in this world I do not see how we have progressed as a collective society. And the US invation of Iraq, more than anything else has proved that the most powerful state in the world is not necessarily the most responsible. How can the US expect other countries to put trust in its mediation when its own foreign policy is morally compromizing? Such "Might is Right" attitude does not bode well, especially in the next century when the US will be joined on the table by other big powers like China and Russia.

My point is, if nations do not take steps to reduce conflict (Israel and Palestine, here here!), if governments do not start acting responsibly, then Mother Nature need not bother with doomsday. Man will orchestrate that on himself.

Another great post Roger, you truly are in the middle of a very rich vein.

I strongly believe that western society has lost its way and has confused happiness with pleasure. Too many people are lost to a pursuit of pleasure.

The pursuit of pleasure is yielding the greed and consumerism and it's resultant side effects. If you stand back and look at the auto industry, the advertising industry, the average shopping mall, the average garage stuffed to the brim with unwanted junk. It all becomes clear that our path is unsustainable.

I am recently started and failed Buddhist. By this I mean that I am trying to find a way to change my path. It's a hard journey and one that I intend to reinvogorate my efforts towards in 2009.

Ultimately the crisis we face is driven by choices WE make. each and every one of us. For many years we have made some startlingly bad choices.

Now we are seeing the results.

In this sea of despair I wish you kind winds in 2009.
Rob

PS - Before the haters start again. I am British, of no party political persuasion and living increasingly nervously in the US.

Thanks for pointing all that out, Captain Obvious. All due respects, sir, but you're five years too late with this rant.

I've noticed your cynical perspective about mankind's fate in many of your reviews over the past ten years, and I'm baffled by it. I remember when I first started reading your reviews a couple of years ago; I remember how optimistic you were about our humanity and our future. I still think you believe in the former, but no longer the latter.

As a logical extension of your thinking, should you stop believing in the former? Should you no longer write about how beautiful humanity is in order not to give young couples hoping to have children the wrong idea? C'mon Rog; snap out of it.

Ebert: I'm not a pessimist. I'd say I'm more of a worrier.

"Ebert: Why doesn't a cable station re-run Guy Lombardo on New Year's Eve? After all it's the same damn countdown every year. The last thing I need is CNN treating it as breaking news. And who gives a flying fish about live shots of the Eve creeping westward through in Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Iceland? The Waldorf Astoria is plenty far away enough for me. And on all but EST, you can get to bed a little earlier."

Hey, Andy Rooney, sorry to hear you have a problem with people staying up too late on NEW YEAR'S EVE. To quote Saul Bellow, "Don't be such a crotchety old doomsday prophet, Ebert."

Ebert: I always stay up late, but not to watch it covered as ***BREAKING NEWS!!!***

There's no reason to fret. We're humans and we're the best and worst this planet has to offer. Is the world changing any more drastically than it has in the last few centuries? It's not really hard to answer this question.

We know more about our planet than ever before, the opportunity is there for us to fix it. We probably will start too late (we almost always do) to save everything but we'll end up saving 90% that is very important to us.

You and I can fret about all that is changing in the world but it won't do us any good. We're lucky to be here in the first place, we have an obligation to enjoy our lives, not waste it.

I'm not sure that what you are being here is a "realist". It's more like you're looking at very real problems and imagining the worst-case scenario happening. It's not a bad approach, "hope for the best and prepare for the worst" that is, but people have been saying our society is on the verge of falling apart for some time now and it hasn't happened yet.

If it makes you feel any better, there have been over 250 earthquakes under Yellowstone in the past 3 days. If the supervolcano goes off there won't be much of society's ills to worry about since there will be no society, and global warming will be a thing of the past since the sunlight will be blocked out. You're lucky in that you live close enough that you'll die immediately — I'm far enough away that I will end up pushing my son down I-95 in a shopping cart under an ashen sky, pistol at the ready in case any cannibals turn up.

"People are educated and capable of more than ever before."

You're kidding me, right?

As a nation, we actually allow Creationists to teach their own children at home. We pay football players millions, teachers a pittance, and an entire generation thinks "pwn" is a word. People insist they don't have time to read, unless there is something Oprah has suggested. The internet reeks of porn and capitalism. Intelligent people running for government office are sneered at as "elitists" while buffoons are given wardrobe make-overs and paraded as viable public servants. We seek the wisdom of plumbers. No offense, plumbers, but my sink still leaks.

The shiny-happies want none of this doom-and-gloom. Have some popcorn and see a (bad) movie, they say. Life is beautiful. You're scaring the kids. I'm reminded of an old saying Coach Bob Knight once butchered, "As long as you're being raped, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

When America is prosperous, the poor and lower middle class are told their misfortune is their own fault. They weren't smart enough; they weren't willing to work hard enough. Yet, in the coming economic meltdown, it's the greedy rich begging for hand-outs, and those with experience in poverty are likely to be the best prepared.

The American standard of living has been on a steady decline for years and years. As history teaches, that decline will continue until America is supplanted as a has-been empire. I know people who think they are successful, paying for three vehicles and two homes and owning nothing. They can't imagine they were digging a sinkhole. They can't imagine it isn't someone else's fault. They can't believe there were limits all along when they were told there weren't.

According to the Aztecs, we only have to suffer through four more years of this anyway.

Roger, tribalism is something that humanity must transcend if it is to survive. Modern weaponry in the hands of a dysfunctional collective with a low moral center of gravity is not merely a recipe for disaster -- it IS disaster, plated and garnished and ready to be served. Consider though the tricky business of the tribal mindset -- When the self identifies with a tribe and adopts it's perspectives, all other tribes and perspectives must be discounted, because for the self-sense to strengthen, which is all the ego really wants, it must experience an against-ness. So if one's sense of self comes from the tribe, one clings to the tribe rather vigorously. To lose the tribe would be to lose yourself, your identity. The self doesn't want to be lost. The self equates this with a kind of death. When the self feels that it's tribe is being threatened, it experiences this as a kind of interior death, and so will seek to cause the death of opposing exterior collectives that mean it harm, real or perceived. This is sort of a grim reverse function of how the self formed it's interior life in the first place, through the exterior collective.

Ebert: Among other things, you have just described the seductive appeal of urban gangs.

Ebert: How about this for a hypothesis: We are poisoning the planet and the animals leave the worst parts first?

Good enough, and it has the advantage of not requiring belief in anything odd. But how do we account for the increase in natural disasters?

Ebert: Regarding only the weather, I think global warming is involved.

I think the property owning class, as George Carlin used to refer to them (and let's be honest, it's a more appropriate tag for the people at the top than 'the rich' is, as plenty of 'rich' people are still in debt up to their ears) will choose to save themselves. That may mean putting in place the protections that will stave off revolution (and go either the police state route or the enhanced social safety net route), or it may mean digging new homes and societies into the sides of mountains, Fallout-style.
Yet I don't believe our salvation is in their hands, it was always in ours - to buy less, drive less, demand more from those who have more so it can be given to those who have less. In some cases we tried, in others we didn't; yeah, leadership matters and what Obama decides will make some difference, but not the way that what each and every one of us do on a daily basis matters.

Ebert: "Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Typhoons. Volcanoes."

I agree! God damn Bush and his neo-con cronies! He didn't even TRY to stop plate tectonics! We need change now!

Well, to the Seventh-Day Adventists, none of this comes as much of a surprise. I'm agnostic, by the way. It's just that I was raised to expect everything to go down the tubes before the supposed second coming. I'm young enough that I'll probably live to see what happens in the next 60 years at least.

Ebert: The Seventh-Day Adventists have a literal interpretation of the bible, and are Young Eargth Cfreationists, but should not be confused with other fundamentalist groups. They advocate religious freedom and tolerance. They have historically embraced all ethnic groups. They support a woman's choice to have an abortion for reasons of health, severe birth defects, incest or rape--but not for convenience, gender selection or birth control. They oppose euthanasia except for the withdrawal of life support in the terminally ill. They permit birth control used in marriage. They do not perform same-sex marriages, and do not ordain the openly gay. They advocate a vegetarian diet, but do not demand it. They prohibit smoking, alcohol and drugs. On average, they live 10 years longer. There is an SDA supermarket in Berrien Springs, Mich., near our Michigan home, with something looking subtly different. The colors on the bottle labels in the soda pop section, for example: They are all caffeine-free. No liquor. No cigarettes. No animal protein. Berrien Springs is also the home of their Andrews University. It is common to see on the sidewalks of this small town students in African and Asian garb. The church is considered too liberal by most fundamentalist denominations.

The discussion this post generated is amazing. I'm really enjoying reading all the comments. I'd like to suggest that everyone who has an idea about how to make things better go to http://change.gov/open_government/yourseatatthetable or some other part of change.gov and leave your feedback for the new administration.

Ebert: In my present condition, I cannot drink. These comments are my coffee in the morning. Some of them raise my blood pressure more than fresh-ground beans.

It really, really sucks that they can't fix your body better. We're so lucky to have you.

But it'll make a terrific picture:

Screenplay by Joe Eszterhas, suggested by an idea by Roger Ebert

Replace the word Cylon with anything relvent and this rings true!

You know when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question why. Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done. Like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play god. Create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play god then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore."

The movie that I keep thinking of is not Children of Men, but rather Dr. Strangelove....

By Brian on December 29, 2008 6:04 PM

Roger, what a bunch of bleeding heart liberal dribble. I don't understand why liberals like you hate America so much.

Ebert: I fail to understand why this entry is liberal, or why you think I hate America.

By KB on December 30, 2008 2:12 AM

Your side has spent the past eight years accusing George Bush of every evil under the sun, of being Hitler, of being a war criminal, and now you want our side to just smile and hold hands. F**k you.

Ebert: Bush was not a good president. His own inner circle despaired. Now they are coming forward to speak.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/29/exaides-bush-never-recove_n_154119.html

What I can't understand, Roger, is why you would waste even a moment's time on the ignorant/intolerant by replying to them. When these nitwits state reality-free opinions as fact, as the above two, or claim that it's "our side" against "their side," rather than what should be a common interest as Americans (and, even more importantly, as humans), they're not worthy of attention. From Wikiquote on Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. -- Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4

Ebert: If I don't reply, will they think they have scored a point? What saddens me is that such comments show no thought at all. They are mindless reflexes using trigger words. To call someone a "liberal" is somehow so final you need say, or think, noththing else. Here are the most popular trigger words:

Liberal
Elite / elitist
Left-wing
Ph.D
Intellectual
East Side (anything)
Northeastern (anything)
New York (as a code for "Jewish")
Urban (as a code for African-American)
Tree huggers
Professor
Scientist
Athiest
Agnostic
Men from monkeys
Welfare
Minority
Fringe
Darwinist (not Darwinian)
Theory (misused as a scientific term)
Socialist
Godless
Secular
Secular Liberal (a Limbaughism)
Lefty

These words attached to a name or group mean "case closed" for those wielding them. Many people using them do not know precisely what they mean. In reading more than 1,000 comments and 600,000 words on the Ben Stein entry, I found that almost no defenders of ID know the difference between the scientific and vernacular use of the word theory.

I see the world decaying around me. It started in about the 6th season of "Roseanne" and hasn't stopped since. A couple of weeks ago, I was booked as an extra in a film through a calling service I have. I was told that I would be a businessman and then change over into a swimsuit at a crazy frat party. Red alert, right, but when I joined with my calling service, there was a checklist of things I would do, and things I wouldn't do. When I got to the Santa Clarita location and made my way through wardrobe, I noticed a script portion from the day prior. "Naked women cover the lawn. Horny men everywhere. Fat Italian man pouring pizza sauce on nude woman." The production assistant came in and said, "All right, where are my three businessmen? Great, this is a low budget film so they're going to need you really soon. So, you guys are just gonna kinda wander in and flirt with the naked girls, and decide which one you want to get with."
It wasn't gonna happen for me. I caused a problem for my calling service, for the casting director, and for the film crew. The other extras stared at me, as I packed up my belongings; "Where are you going?" But if one person is so essential, if the decision to have stayed would have made a difference, then the decision not to stay was also essential, and made a difference too.
There are far too many people in this world who have shallow identities of themselves. So when an identity "team" is created for them, it's a free pass. The more famous the identity team becomes, the more worthy the individual feels.
What we need in this world, are people who stand up for something, especially for the voice inside themselves that tell them that something is not quite right.
Some of my friends said to me, "This is the price you have to pay in Hollywood. Maybe you should just leave. What's your deal with nudity, anyway?"
It is a struggle for each of us in our own ways, on different moral issues, but there are people who give themselves a temporary easy ride, foregoing the struggle, and whistling right along, asking the "Doomsday" folks, "Why so serious?" Cheetos taste delicious. We're all going to die anyway. A bag a day didn't do my grandma any harm. Well as Oprah's doctor has stated, "It's not about how long you live; it's about how well you live."
Am I uptight? Maybe. But it keeps away fat Italian men who pour pizza sauce on nude women.

Ebert: First of all, you were absolutely right.

Secondly, in the world as we know it, how many fat Italian men pour pizza sauce on nude women? Filmmakers should apply some elementary thinking:

1. No woman will take off her clothes and allow a man she doesn't know to pour pizza sauce on her unless she is a prostitute.

2. Therefore, this is a waste of pizza sauce, particularly in the mind of a fat Italian man. Just go ahead and have sex, take the sauce home, and pour it over some baked mozzarella.

3. Lateral thinking: Assuming pizza sauce must be poured, it would be more intriguing to have the nude women pour it on the fat Italian men.

4. For strict consistency, the men should also be nude. We aren't living in the dark ages.

Reply to: Kesava: I am from India, and the way things are going in the subcontinent now, unless something is done, and done soon, the next war that starts from there will be devastating for the world, thanks to the nuclear capabilities of both India and Pakistan...And the US invation of Iraq, more than anything else has proved that the most powerful state in the world is not necessarily the most responsible. How can the US expect other countries to put trust in its mediation when its own foreign policy is morally compromizing? Such "Might is Right" attitude does not bode well, especially in the next century when the US will be joined on the table by other big powers like China and Russia.

Roger has listed some of the problems faced by a planet with 6.2 billion people.

Those problems will be substantially different when the world population rises to 9.2 billion. Around the year 2050.

Tom Cruise was fascinated by the script for "Valkyrie." At what point does a moral German citizen decide to KILL HITLER?

If the war has already been lost, and Der Fuehrer refuses to stop fighting, is it a moral position to STOP him?

Kesava, I applaud your grasp of the problem. I fear you will not accept the solution. We can do nothing and nuclear war will render your subcontinent uninhabitable.

"The Day The Earth Stood Still" contained a threat at the end. Get rid of nuclear weapons or we (the galactic federation) will take them away.

The easiest solution is to simply reduce the number of births for the next century. That will have a severe and tragic impact on a personal level, rather than a global level.

We call this a dilemma. A choice between two equally unpleasant choices. Allowing North Korea, India and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons - or China, for that matter - may be a luxury the planet can no longer afford.

Things will work out. As Dylan once sang "the answer is blowin' in the wind".

A sobering reflection of the difficulties we face. Against all odds, though, I remain optimistic. Humanity has been through dark times before--the Black Plague early in the previous millennium, two world wars, a cold war in which the fear of nuclear destruction hung over the population. Through it all, humanity has collectively persevered, though it may suffer a fat black eye in doing so.

If anything, our current world torments illustrate a basic fact in that nature always balances itself out. Decades of an unsustainable lifestyle has exacerbated the looming problem of increased global warming. Unrestrained fiscal behavior and our greedy and corrupt financial industry have nearly brought on a materialistic Apocalypse. Eventually the day of reckoning always comes, and now it has arrived for us.

It's always said that history repeats itself, and now is no different. Just when humanity seems like it can learn from the past, sometimes it forgets or learns the wrong lessons. I sincerely hope that once and for all, if we are able to make it out of this mess than we can altogether work in achieving a sustainable living style and a respectful treatment and handling of all our currency.

The task before us is very daunting, and Obama has so much on his shoulders that it's hard to not cringe. But I retain a measure of "hope," his favorite word. Basically, short of an asteroid the size of Texas hitting this planet, I remain optimistic that we will survive it all and find the way.

Ebert: Just to cheer you up, I assume you have seen this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/27/watch-if-an-asteroid-hit_n_153724.html

Any critic who has viewed more than a couple of horror movies is perfectly qualified to remark on the current perfect storm of geo-political, geo-religious, geo-economic, and geo-environmental upheavals.

Thanks, Roger, for you trenchant remarks. I refer your audience to the work of James Howard Kunstler, and especially his book The Long Emergency. He also has a thoughtful if not optimistic blog that can be found by the usual simple search.

You are certainly right to be concerned. I’d like to share with you two recent articles that have particularly affected me, from the Guardian here in Britain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/15/oil-peak-energy-iea

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change

The first details that the International Energy Agency, once very conservative and optimistic on future energy supplies, now is in general agreement about an imminent peak in oil.
The second is how many scientists are now increasingly aware, as you correctly suggest, of the problem of positive feedback loops that reinforce global warming and make it get increasingly worse, making all action to try and stop it almost impossible if that invisible tipping point is crossed. Many now see it as too late to avoid the most severe consequences.

I would like to call such reports merely the works of “pessimists” or “alarmists” as so many others do, but I find that the evidence suggests that sadly it is the work of realists.

I certainly hope that new leadership in America can help try and fully focus on such issues in the little time left to deal with them, but it will need the work of all peoples of the world willing to undertake great change immediately to actually achieve what is needed.

A couple weeks ago I woke up thinking "All the colors have gone from Lorbanery," a paraphrase from the Ursula Le Guin book "The Farthest Shore."

For those unfamiliar, the world in the book has seemingly gone into some sort of depression, as no one can outside of the center of the world can work their crafts or come to any sort of daily rhythm; things are in a disarray.

The two protagonists investigate the island Lorbanery that was once known for its' beautiful, dazzling dyes and cloths and find that none of them remember what the true colors look like - they can no longer distinguish between muddy blues and true azure.

Not to spoil the book for those who have not read (it is worthy reading for anyone, in my view) but the loss of ability to see the real colors finds its genesis in humanity doing all that it can to escape death, to deny the simple beauty of our finite time here.

Perhaps we have come to a point in our own development where we are so consumed by the thought of death, we have no more will left to fight it, and all colors are lost to our eyes.

Which is not to say that we are doomed, merely that our eyes would be better served looking elsewhere.

The obscene treatment of animals that our society is based upon and our total disregard for the environment makes me just want to say that if our species should perish as a backlash of the devastation we have wrought, well, we had it coming. Maybe the next intellectually advanced species to evolve will be better stewards of the planet.

Why are human beings so #$%^? Why can't we live and work for human prosperity? What pressures humans to become so egocentric? The answer might be that God is simply too generous and gave us too much and we haven't learned to handle it.
God gave each of us our unique soul, and our home planet Earth. And the known universe is our backyard for us to explore. Even though I long for the day I'm in Space, I cannot imagine living without the healthy vitamin E our sun provides. And the summers at the beach and so on.
We are spoiled and yet want more. I can't blame our past "leaders" because they are stupid. Why do I say that? Because the number of people suffering this day, December 30, 2008 is substantial.

The reason why the world is in chaos is because we have strayed away from what is important. FAMILY.

Too many things but I got to catch up to a world that is awkward and in need of repair.
How many times will God save us? I have to say he will never not do so. But I fear people will just use this to continue with their ways.

Is the answer coming? We all know the answer, we are simply in denial.
All is good though. I am happy and accept my fate because I make it and God oversees and my death will be the end of my trial.

Ebert: It is a rare person who takes responsibility for himself.

I've been thinking so many of these same things, Roger -- including the notion that folks who have lived closer to the land, with far less, may be able to weather all the coming storms better than we sophisticated urbanites and suburbanites.

Maybe this is what our most famous Western Holy Book means when it says "The meek shall inherit the Earth." The meek. The humble. The folks who never exalted themselves or their achievements, who were never dazzled by all the promises of modern technological society.

And perhaps our society is what that same Book means when it speaks of the Fall of Babylon. "that great city", or the Whore of Babylon, the symbol of an unholy alliance of church, state, and commerce.

I'd love to be wrong about this, but you and I agree about 98%, sounds like.

I'm not denying that all of these are very serious problems that need to be immediatly addressed but aren't you just being alarmist?

I'm sure that people who lived during the Cold War and feared nuclear holocaust happening every day of their lives, people who sent thir children to school wearing dog tags, had way more reason to think and behave like Doomsdayers than we do now.

And nothing happened then because the situation eventually ended, blew over or was rectified. I guess that had as much to do with luck as heroism, understanding and the triumph of common sense but the important thing is that the world did not end.

Well, Roger. I hope you don't die with sh*t on your face, too. You won't die with any of it in you after this bunch gets done kicking it out of you.

Rough. You guys, leave poor Roger alone. He's just lived through a bad century.

You know, I had a friend who, when asked for a working model of anarchy, came up with 'a path in the snow.' The path was made for the benefit of the walker, by the walker, but others benefit from it too, and in using it, make it better for those who in turn follow them.

One must not assume that just because it's every man for himself, god is necessarily against us all. And why must you not assume that?

Because there is no proof for or against. You can't even get a contrary-to-fact conditional to work. Given that scenario, only a fool would pick a non-provable lemma that clearly worked against him.

So buck up, there, and get the hell out of the windy city. I believe you've got the Blago Blahs. Go enjoy some of that global warming on Turks and Caicos and post your next blog with toes in the sand and your head in a better place.

Happy new year, Roger. Many more.

Ebert: Blago blahs? I thought he was a goofball since his first primary. I'm enjoying myself watching him twist in the wind. He just appointed Roland Burris, one of his opponents in that primary, to the U.S. Senate, in part because during his decades in Illinois politics Burris has never been associated with the slightest hint of scandal. How perfect is that?

The bottom line is that humans, as a species, have become far too dominant for our own good. We are destroying our own habitat, and the ability of our planet to sustain us, and a large part of the reason we are doing this is because people with religious beliefs think that their deity of choice will work it all out, that this is all part of "the divine plan".

It may well be that we are witnessing the beginning of another dark age. People are generally ignorant, uneducated, and are equipped to do little more than consume and reproduce. The people who survive what's coming will be those who have the knowledge, resilience, and forbearance to do so.

Change is inevitable. Trying to preserve things as they were is futile. Surely part of personal responsibility is paying the price for one's mistakes. It's looking likely that humanity will soon be paying a big price for our collective mistakes.

I wanted to mention a new project called CoWrite. (Co-write?)

It's a contest where numerous people will submit the first ten pages of a script, and the Cowrite people will pick one. Then, another round where you submit the second ten pages, and so on.

There's a great potential for winding up with a very, very bad script. But it's also fun to see how a concept is developed over several months. I would love to sit in on Christopher Nolan's brainstorming sessions with his brother Jonathan and David S. Goyer. Apparently Warner Bros. isn't giving them any boundaries, just a very big truck full of money.

At the beginning of a movie, the viewpoint character has a NEED. Resolving his Inner Need allows him to change into a better person. (Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets" being blatant and obvious about it.) which means, in the first ten pages, you have to set up the viewpoint character in the BEFORE stage. In "The Sound of Music," Maria goes to the hills because her heart is lonely, even though she lives in an abbey with nuns. Without knowing how the problems are resolved, can anyone write the first ten pages successfully?

http://cowritescript.com/page.php?pn=about

http://cowritescript.com

Todd Soffian, founder and executive producer of Cowrite, graduated The George Washington University with a BA in Film Studies and has worked at a literary/talent agency, at a production company and as a professional script reader.

Movie Premise: Determined to be a high-level Jason Bourne type operative, an awkward teenager enlists the help of a mysterious, supposed ex-CIA agent in his hometown and finds himself entangled in a dangerous plot that is way over his head.

I was struck by how this Premise matches our discussion about nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. Today, our military is going hi-tech. If you think about it, we're preparing to seize and confiscate weapons of mass destruction from... well, anyone.

http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/nssts/html/chapt3.html

SITE: Today, as a result of arms reduction and nonproliferation measures already undertaken, thousands of nuclear warheads once aimed at the United States have been removed from their launchers and shipped to dismantlement plants, and a wide range of countries are not armed with weapons of mass destruction that might otherwise have acquired such weapons.

If you need to have the policy spelled out for you:

http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/21247.htm

Principles of nonproliferation are known and formally accepted around the world. But, they are too often ignored and flagrantly violated by determined states that view WMD as integral to their survival and international influence. The United States and its allies must be willing to deploy more robust techniques, such as (2) interdiction and seizure, and (3) preemptive military force where required. The pursuit of WMD and ballistic missile delivery systems cannot be cost free...

Klaatu delived the message, and we didn't listen.

Nobody should have nuclear weapons. At some point, possession of nuclear weapons may be grounds for preemptive military force, resulting in seizure and confiscation.

The U.S. Military is being re-configured into an Attack and Confiscation format. Saddam was a dry run, which revealed some deficiencies in the system.

I have my fingers crossed that the first, second and third 10-page winners in Cowrite will set up a real-world scenario involving nuclear nonproliferation measures.

Or, this:

I don't want to be a statistic. I want to have sex with a girl I love. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I want to write a novel. I want to have some sense of completion, at least, before I die.

Ebert: And right there is the plot outline for your novel.

Now, we just need to work out the first ten pages...

Mr. Ebert,

Have you ever found yourself appreciative of a fine writer, artist, actor, director, etc., only to find that although you admire their body of work you disagree with their politics/ideaology?

That is the case here. I admire your reviews and read them faithfully as I know you LOVE the movies and usually, although not always, leave politics out of your reviews. You focus on the art of film, storyline and characters. I applaud you for that.

However I have one observation. Don't believe everything you read. When there are as many facts contradicting any position on everything from global warming to the economy to the Iraq war, it doesn't make sense to take everything at face value just because someone WANTS to believe it to be true.

Imagine for a moment if the United States had not been an isolationist nation when Germany invaded Poland to spark WWII. What if we had "done the right thing" (hindsight being 20/20) and stopped a tyrant (Hitler) before he could gain a foothold, thereby stopping WWII before it could even begin? I believe the liberal/progressives at the time would have screamed bloody murder that we sacrificed American lives in a meaningless war. Are you beginning to see the parallel here? Don't forget that we ultimately lost more than 500,000 American lives in that war because we failed to do the right thing at a time that would have prevented WWII. Liberal progressives at the time said no to getting involved and we ultimately ended up with a Holocaust.

By the way, more US service personnel died while Bill Clinton was in office (over 5,000) than have died while W was president (approx. 4200+).

I agree with those who believe that good men will always prevail and if that means sacrifice then the quality of good human beings will rise to the occasion and triumph over evil.

Keep on writing and may the new year bring you and your loved ones joy and prosperity.

Ebert: Did you simply make this up? Our entry into a "foreign war" was staunchly opposed by a Republican majority, including isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh, Robert A. Taft, and Wendell Willkie, who was FDR's 1940 GOP opponent. Attacking Hitler was strongly supported by "Liberal Progressives," including the U.S. volunteers in the Spanish Civil War against Hitler's ally Franco. My own newspaper was founded a week before Pearl Harbor by Marshall Field to provide a liberal voice against the fiercely isolationist Col. Robert McCormick and his Chicago Tribune.

There are a few things I have to pat myself on the back for. I don't drive a car and have never owned one myself. My family has a car but we rarely use it and I almost always take public transportation.

I have never owned a fur, as far as I know, because I guess it's possible I have owned clothing partially made of animal parts. I have rarely owned leather shoes or belts, allthough again, I think some might have been made of leather and I didn't realize it.

I recycle, even though I'm skeptical about it, mainly cause it's illegal not to do it. I never buy any jewelry and have rarely ever worn it, so my boycott on any bling mined in Africa is quite a solid one indeed. Easy to boycott something you never did in the first place. Same with my boycott on veal- pretty easy to shun something you don't particularly like and actually never really ate. I've never even tasted foie de gras. I don't wear any makeup so I don't contribute to cosmetics being tested on animals, allthough I have mixed feelings on animal testing for scientific purposes.

All in all, my footprint on the enviornment is a very good one. The only thing you could fault me for is long showers, not being a vegetarian and using shampoos that could have been tested on animals.

It finally seems as if America has woken up from it's dream of individual successes to a reality where collective effort is necessary. I hope that USA and the rest of the world will maintain a focus on collective successes (balanced, of course, with individual needs and preferences) in the future.

Ebert: If I don't reply, will they think they have scored a point? What saddens me is that such comments show no thought at all. They are mindless reflexes using trigger words. To call someone a "liberal" is somehow so final you need say, or think, noththing else. Here are the most popular trigger words:...

These words attached to a name or group mean "case closed" for those wielding them. Many people using them do not know precisely what they mean. In reading more than 1,000 comments and 600,000 words on the Ben Stein entry, I found that almost no defenders of ID know the difference between the scientific and vernacular use of the word theory.

If you don't reply, who gives a shit if they think they've scored a point?!? Everything they are, everything they say or write, is based on their unfounded, irrational belief systems. You can bet your ass that they think they've scored a point simply by getting you to respond, even if it is only to dismiss their inanities.

PS I would add "drive-by media" to your closed-minded Repub memes list.

Ebert: Oh yeah: the media in general. Also

The Mainstream Media
The pundits
CNN
Rachel Maddow and/or Katie Couric

D'oh! I didn't notice I wasn't logged in; anonymity doesn't suit me (12/30, 3:56 PM)! Also, I forgot to add the HTML tag necessary to bold your response to "Brian."

Hey Roger, in your sixth paragraph on the economy you seem to have some insightful thoughts. Am I wrong in thinking that you believe Bush's socialist economic policies and Obama's likely continuation of the same disasterous economic policies will make the economy worse and lead the United States even farther from free-market capitalism?

Ebert: No, you would be mistaken, even if the Republican National Committee did call Bush a socialist today. Why did it wait until now to decide this?

In the past, we have tried to make a savior for us through science, philosophy, government, etc. Our government is there to "promote the General Welfare" and to "provide the common defense" and we have somehow changed these things in our mind. Now we citizens depend upon the government as some 30 and 40 somethings still do on their parents.

We are absolutely spoiled. We lack a lot of things in our character as a people because things have come to easily for us. I am living off of the backs of my grandparents and parents and now it seems to be slipping away. I am discouraged talking to people my age (I am 20) many times because of their lack of perspective because of their education- both the one received academically and the one they receive by living (and living in difficulty). I am disgusted by the selfishness of the people around me we live so excessively (and I am just as guilty). We all need to reevaluate. The government doesn't need to bail us out. We need to take our consequences pull ourselves by our bootstraps even if that's all we now own. Our government needs to start operating like a housewife and her budget.

Things are being taken away from us. I feel as if I'm living in a house of cards and it's about to tumble down. I too feel that end of time feeling, as you. I remember that mine is not the only generation that has felt this way, but it seems to be more than ever. The world is changing and I'm trying to adapt to every situation, but I'm afraid that someday I will wake up to a nightmare and have that "in space no one can hear you scream" moment as things have changed so much that my voice doesn't even matter.

I am glad you linked William Butler Yeats as he's my favorite poet. Here's a story I've always loved:

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/2861/

"Where there is nothing, there is God", Mr. Ebert. That's my only hope- that's my savior.

The last item on your list of "trigger words" is "Lefty." As a left-handed person, I'm dismayed: In a lifelong--and fruitless--endeavor for people to address me by a nickname, "Lefty" has always been in the top five--along with "Butch," "Duke," "P.J." and "The Equalizer" (the last, I'll admit, more of a professional wrestling handle than a nickname).

But your "Lefty" smear has sullied my ambitions. If I weren't a Christian Socialist, I'd haul off and turn your other cheek for you!

All the Best,

The Boss

Brian said:
"Roger, what a bunch of bleeding heart liberal dribble. I don't understand why liberals like you hate America so much."

No u.

But really, Roger, why so blue? Generally you're such a jovial little chap.

(To avoid wasting time, I'll just say I agree with Nic Hautamaki.)

Wait a minute. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you just write a piece, somewhere around November fifth, rhapsodizing in rhapsodic terms about how wonderful it was that Obama had been elected, and that the skies will be blue 'cause our (or your) dreams had come true, etc etc?
And now Obama can't solve everything? Well that sure didn't take long. He hasn't even been inaugurated yet. Surely, Mr. Ebert, you aren't playing the 'lowering of expectations' game at this late date, are you?
Bush faced essentially the same problems. Ah, but it was ALL HIS FAULT... that's the difference, isn't it? Obama's not to blame for any of this.
Let me ask you, will Obama ever be held responsible for ANYTHING during his tenure in office? Or will we forever hold Bush responsible? He'll be like Stalin, or the Nazis. Whenever we run out of bad guys, and since we certainly will never be able to blame Obama for anything bad that happens before, during, or after his administration, we'll drag Bush out of his grave and wring the last few drops of culpability from him.

Ebert: Am I confused, or did you just accuse me of doing what you accuse me of never being able to do?

Roger,

I tend to agree with your list of mindless "trigger" words. Thus, I never thought I would be one to clock in and encourage "balance" on the issue, but your list does strike me as tendentious, even if it is mostly accurate. In fairness, one could probably add the following:

right-wing
Christian
religious
Bible thumper
conservative
southern
rural
Red State
Nazi
Fascist
Zionist
racist
sexist
rich
Big Oil
Big Pharma
suburbia

I think any reasonable person would have to admit that these terms, too, are used as facile, vacuous insults. Whether IDer's resort to their preferred triggers more often than those who apply such terms as the above, I cannot say. To my mind, the need to define these issues as left/right or liberal/conservative is itself deeply stupid and a large part of the problem.

Cheers,
Dan

Ebert: You're quite right, and you forgot:

Religious extremists
Flat-Earthers
Rednecks
Dittoheads
Neanderthals
Fat cats
Drop-outs
Anti-intellectuals
Book-burners
NASCAR fans (unfair to NASCAR)

I can hardly ask you to read through all the comments, but I did observe that those on the right tended to use more trigger words, and those on the left more attempts at reasoning--at great length. After reading more than 600,000 words, my emotions are mixed.

By Andy H. on December 29, 2008 3:38 PM
"As a young person (22), I take issue with this statement. I can't count the times I sit in class, or run around at work, or lie awake at night, literally hoping for and imagining ways for the world to end. I assure you that my reasons are purely selfish, most of which are along the lines of "If the world ends, I won't have to do that awful ten page paper…..”

By Paul on December 29, 2008 4:01 PM
“I’m 24. I'll say I find Ebert's doom scenario rather optimistic. The real nightmare, and what will almost certainly happen, is no collapse, no death, no possible rebirth. ……. Rather, same old crap, same old power games, same old hierarchy and meaningless, vapid, consumer culture, only always a little worse, every year a little worse.”

How refreshingly honest !! Looking down the entire thread is a revelation, like a mirror.

As you said ,we live in “boxes”. But even after having peeped through so many “windows” we seem to be stuck on square one, like Faust.

It’s easier to worry about the world than to feel, much less to be passionate.

It’s hard enough to come to terms with one’s own finitude with Socratic stoicism, much less the general dissolution of “things”. Was it Pascal who said two things difficult to stare at are the sun and death.

To paraphrase Nichiren: the most terrible things in the world are raging fires, flashing swords and the shadow of death. Even horses and cattle fear death, much more people in their prime.

The macro problem is a reflection of the micro problem at the individual level…..the warming of the globe, the being on the brink etc are perhaps signals that the time has finally come when we have to “learn” the joy of being human…..to address the philosophical or, if you prefer ”spiritual” vacuum which we inhabit……the age old age shared destiny of sufferings of old age, sickness, death.

Optimism is based on courage, determination

To quote:

"In life when we feel we have reached a limit, that is when the true battle begins. Just when you despair and think it is impossible to go any further, will you become apathetic, or will you say it's not over and stand up with an unyielding spirit? The battle is decided by this single determination."

http://www.ikedaquotes.org/strength.html

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out of the same Door as I went."

Cheers !!

I forgot to add that the Israeli conflict right now is because of Iran, who funds Hezbollah and is setting up training camps in Venezuela courtesy of Chavez who may one day end up at our back door, the Mexican border,and is supported by Saudi Arabia who wants to destroy Iran Shiite muslims and Hamas.

What I find most interesting nowadays is our easy access to truth,if we just look. Just finished reading the Vanity Fair piece on the Bush years and have been fact checking using the various search engines. Do this all the time. Always amazed how adept and facile many of top Bush dogs were in twisting,blurring the facts to meet their ends. The phone rang and a family member, when informed of my current undertaking,started belittling the article, using many of your above stated euphemisms,using the same discredited, pathetic pablum that has for so long masqueraded as truth. When I 'corrected' her,offering immediate verifiable, au contraire proof, she got mad as hell and hung up...you'd have thought I was Delbert Grady and not her brother. All I could think of in retrospect was two things: Sorkin's words, so ably delivered by Jack about 'not being able to handle the truth.' And Stephen Hawking's remarks to Charlie Rose that we are endangering ourselves by our greed and stupidity and that we need to 'spread out' soon to survive. When pressed by Rose,"Will we survive?" All Hawking could muster was a nonresounding "maybe."
...but the truth can set us free. That one I like.

Really liked last entry, especially the remarks of the chap from India.

Roger,

Does it give you the least bit of pause that the earth may have in fact happened to cool this year? And that may coincide with the lowest amount of solar sunspot activity in a long time? Don't tell me TIME magazine will have to dust off their old 1970's "The Ice Age is coming" covers again....

I once attended a talk given by a ranger at a (national?) park in Colorado. We were shown a horrific series of slides: eagles with their beaks deformed by chemicals, broad swaths of land deforested, all the horrors we've become so accustomed to.

Then, at some point in the talk the ranger said this, quoting someone whose name I've never been able to recall:

"No man ever made a greater error than he who did nothing because he could only have done a little."

Sometimes, when I've endured a day that seemed to hold nothing more than forcing myself out of bed, trudging to work, coming dully home to eat too much food that I didn't really enjoy, I'm able to console myself by thinking something along the lines of, "Well, I drank cold water from the tap rather than buying a single serving of water in a plastic bottle."

So? Well, if we say for the purposes of discussion that the population of the U.S. is 300,000,000 and that half of those people are adults and that every single one of those adults made that same choice that day, then that's 150,000,000 plastic bottles that will not be, at best, thrown into recycle bins or (worse) garbage cans i.n t.h.a.t o.n.e d.a.y.

My numbers may be shaky but the theory is not.

We are more powerful than we know and we don't have to change the world all by ourselves. We can't. Barack Obama can't, either. But any of us can do a small thing.

I believe the Bush administration was controlled by the religious right. The administration has not been friendly to science. This explains why science has been held back in the past eight years and has not developed as far as it could have by this time. Even though the Bush administration is almost out of the way, it may be difficult for the Obama administration to get the money to build science to a point where it could be used to make life better.

Hi Roger. I felt the need to reply to your blog because the same thoughts, although not as eloquently phrased, plague my mind often. I want to hit myself every time I start feeling ungrateful for the things I have. Our economy is, to be blunt, crap, and the world seems to be not too far ahead. Therefore, its hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. But when it comes down to it, my situation is so much better than all those children's who wake to a living hell every day. I don't blame you at all for being so pessimistic; any sane person would be at this point. And yet, I remain in good spirits. Maybe it's because I'm young and naive, or maybe its because I don't suffer daily. But I think that, with enough hope and a big "HELLO?!! WAKE UP!!!" to the world we can pull through. But it will be difficult, and I have infinite admiration for Obama for his willingness to take these problems upon his shoulders. All I can say is thank you for this blog; its uplifting to discover that some human beings still have a good head on their shoulders.

I live in a small town in the rolling hills of Southern Indiana. We have many cornfields, forests, and lakes. Our houses are built strong, and they keep building more of them. There is one school, a hospital, nearly every fast food place you can think of, and Wal-Mart. We number five thousand people, and we are one hour's drive from the nearest town of 50,000 people. We have access to the internet, swift postal service, navigable roads, plenty of clean air to take in. Gas just got down to $1.54 a gallon, after hitting $4.15 just a few weeks ago. Everybody in town seems to meet at McDonald's. We drink the $1 soft drinks; senior citizens and children get them even cheaper. We sit there, friends, family, complete strangers, by the fake fireplace, underneath the flat-screen television playing CNN all day, peering out the wide, clean windows, and remark about the poor driving people exhibit when they think they're in a hurry. We talk about who's sick, who's getting married, and who's caught up in scandal. We compare health insurance plans and tell stories about the old days--the men of their days working in the mines and the mischief they caused in school, the women of splendid weddings and their kids' passage through childhood. We talk about how things--just things--seem to be getting worse, and we remember times when they in fact were.

At the end of October, I escorted my sister, mother, and niece to Chicago. We stayed by the airport and took the train downtown. We took buses from one part of town to another, pointing to the landmarks. We talked to complete strangers, only because they spoke to us first. Must have known we were tourists. From somewhere very, very different. They saw our street maps and pamphlets and asked us where we were going. My sister, the social butterfly, would ask them if they were going to work, where they worked, where they go home to at night, what it was like to live there, how they liked the big city. They were not only friendly and informative, they seemed happy. Every single one of them seemed perfectly happy to be living, in Chicago, in America, at this moment in time. And there were moments, I seem to recall, when a subtle message was exchanged between us humans, a particular word, a certain tone of voice, a miniscule and fleeting facial gesture indicating that, indeed, times are tough and they may get worse, but they may get better, and there's plenty to be delighted about anyway.

One especially chilly afternoon, I stood beneath the John Hancock building, waiting for my traveling companions to emerge from the American Girl doll store with my niece's birthday present, and the image entered my mind of the building crashing to the ground, of all the buildings toppling over, of the chaos that would ensue around me. I didn't want to have the thought, but it simply came to me, just as the thought of potential calamity comes to me when everything seems perfect, too perfect. I remember saying to myself, as I stood there thinking of what they'd be saying at McDonald's when all the buildings began to fall in the big city, we've never had it this good.

Ebert: I hope you already know you are a gifted writer, in command of the difficult challenge of implying complexity in direct language. You have a distinctive voice from the very first words. This could be the beginning of a novel. I am intrigued by the countless directions in which it could go. It reminds me somehow of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.

While there is no doubt that the problems you mention are real and do warrant serious attention, isn't it each generation's special arrogance to imagine that their problems are worse than the problems of any other generation? Our forefathers grappled with disease, racism, child labor, industrial exploitation, soup kitchens, civil war, fascism, taming a harsh and unforgiving wilderness, to mention just a few from US history alone. And while these issues still exist, the enlightenment has continued to allow us to change, grow, and improve--generally speaking. When Tom Brokaw published his book, "The Greatest Generation," my reaction as a student and teacher of history, was to simply sigh. It is the human spirit which is great, I encourage my students to see, not any one generation's accomplishments or sins. Why is that generation's struggle to resist fascism any more worthy of praise than those who were forced to migrate to this country out of sheer hunger, from a potato famine?

I think of two films to illustrate this point. Forrest Gump. Implausible? Wonderfully, as he cluelessly wanders through the sacred cows of the baby boomer generation, showing his ass to Lyndon Johnson, pulling Dan out of his own self-important misery, etc. Each allusion in the film is a variation on this central trope. I also think of Slumdog Millionaire, which has been on my mind of late. Working with a traditional comic structure, it resists the misery that exists at so many levels in modern India: corruption, religious strife, crushing poverty, child exploitation and prostitution, the everyday assumptions of caste. It refuses to yield, to bend, or to compromise. And although I predict that some director or actor will make a speech on Oscar night about crushing poverty in India, that's not the point of the film, is it?

So problems? Yes, always, and it's best not to turn away. But somewhere, there is a boy with a science kit who will create a battery that will power the car of the future...it is the drumbeat of the ages.

With all due respect to Mr. Ebert, the world is not going to end. If only you could apply your formidable powers as a movie critic to the nightly news, you would see we are all deceived by reporters who would more accurately be described as papparazzi.

Most of 2008 there was a panic over oil. There wasn't actually any reason to panic but very often panic has no reason. Eventually, everyone got tired of panicing and realized there was nothing there... and oil prices returned to normal.

Perhaps the federal government should adopt the rule physicians are supposed to live by... first do no harm. The track record of massive, centralized powers is invariably one of doing harm... and lots of it. The housing bust, the bank bust, the high costs of health care... they all have their roots causes in manipulations by the federal government. Begging even more manipulations by the government is not the way to solve the problems it caused in the first place.

Leave people alone. Keep your hands off their stuff. Enforce a set of basic laws. Were the federal government able to abide by those simple concepts, the U.S. would thrive.

Roger,

I make a point to read most of the comments on your blog, though I confess I slipped out the back door on the Ben Stein thread at about comment number 300. I am an odd mix of an unabashed unchurched fideist (in the manner of Kant probably most famously and Martin Gardner, one of the great non-fiction writers around, most recently) on the religion question and a thoroughgoing Darwinian on the evolution/role of science question, and so I surmised that comments 301 and up would either circle back on already elucidated points or devolve into silliness or incivility. (To your and your readers' credit, incivility here is tame compared to what one sees elsewhere, which is why your blog is amongst the only three or four I read.)

At any rate, from my sampling of the evolution-v.-ID comments, I do think your estimate about those on the right hurling trigger words more often those on the left is accurate and fair. I'm just not sure whether the right-tilt in this case is a characterization of their politics or rather of a kind of cognitive rigidity that in my experience has less to do with politics than narrow-mindedness proper, where the ideological posturing is just an easy emotional release valve.

Cheers,
Dan

In response to your post and the use of Yeats, I offer these alternative views of the situation; Koyaanisqatsi and A Night at the Opera.

There is a quote by Henri Bergson...and I must apologize for paraphrasing, "The only virile response to the human condition is to laugh at it...that is the soul of Comedy."

For a real eye-opening view of this messed up world I suggest you read "When Corporations Rule the World" by David Korten.

Words are funny things, they allow people to say things they might not really feel.

People are funny things too. As personalities we exist in a plane of both true space and a kind of social dementia; whose common perception is often linked by the interior spread of our own thoughts. We do not hold on very well to our own thoughts. In fact, we forget very easily what we say, like the wind our words come and go without a second's warning; eager to move on to the next town on the horizon. (And yet even now... you can begin to see how the limited usage and organization of words can limit your emotions, while thoughts continue to pour out until you can't say what you really mean--lets try another approach shall we? Since brevity is the soul of wit. Before you run off to your cabin in the sky, consider this....

...ALL THESE WORDS, THAT IS, WHAT I AM WRITING ARE CRAP, CRAP, CRAPPP, CRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPP!!!!...... In fact, forget I said them; in fact, forget that I'm even here right now. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps our words in of themselves have become meaningless in their attempts to right the wrongs of our misunderstandings? But even so, let’s change our course.

..As we begin to organize our thoughts, our limited words and loaded perceptions pour out of us like a cascade of endless emotion. The more we often try to jumble our words together, the more often it seems we end up hurting one another. This sort of behavior of course, is not merely limited to words. Actions also play an enormous part. Perhaps this is our own personal downfall as people. Maybe its part of what being human is. As speakers we must insist on being right all the time, how could we do any different? (And I'm not referring to councils of state or heated social gatherings on the political arena-indeed; I am referring to elemental human interactions). After all, we are ourselves; are we really going to deny ourselves that privilege? As listeners it appears that we have grown even worse, lollygagging around in our own thoughts until we reach our own limited conclusions. It seems that we open our mouths even before our minds have a chance to process our feelings. Welcome to being a human being, though I'm not complaining. What could I possibly do to fix what is arguably broken, a battle I am constantly losing with myself? As people, we are always losing and we are always winning; all of the time. What there is no longer any time for is trying to figure out why.

I am baffled at the amount of useless jargon in the world today...

..Call me whatever you want, that is your prerogative as a human being. Fellow neighbors and peers, esteems colleagues and mutual friends, perfect strangers and intimate companions. Call one another what you will; it is only natural, though it may not always be true or civil. In fact it is your singular duty. Human beings are both social and mental animals. As far as we know, at the rate we've been going (and it’s been a little while, though not quite as long as you may think) we exist solely to constantly questions ourselves. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps if God created us in his own image that maybe he wanted us to be satisfied with who we are, where we're going and what we have? Moreover, what we've been given? But I'm not talking about God, I for one am fed up with such arguments. I am referring to the greater goodness of what our world is and all that that implies. Indeed wouldn't it be nice to exist solely for any reason whatsoever outside the limited confines of our own needs and wants. Our capacity to wish to control and understand and comprehend what is utterly incomprehensible (that's right buddy, incomprehensible; you KNOW I am right--that is not a trigger word either). Attention humans, its time to fess up to the fact that maybe you don't know shit, and you should be satisfied with that, not merely satisfied; content, and in every sense of the word that that entails.

But let's shift gears here for one second...

If I may pause here for a moment to acknowledge a great writer, not merely a great writer but a decent human being. A man who is not afraid to speak his mind, whom is in the truest sense of the word a dedicated journalist and film critic. A free-thinker, a free-spirit and an all-around fun fellow to listen to. A film lover, and who I hope is also a lover of life. I have the highest respect for you, though we've never met; you sir, brighten my day... You know who you are.

Lets come to my point, I do not wish to comment on this article, nor do I wish to expound, expose and expostulate the amount of hopeless dreck (which seems to pour out of people you've never met, like a never-ending-torrent evoking the same old tired clichés of complaints). I do not wish to go there, nor do I have the understanding, the politics or the personal experience to do so.. No siree, I will try and talk about one of my most personal joys, one of my greatest strengths and greatest hobbies and loves in life. A love which requires no amount of class existence, nor a shard of human strength or knowledge. It is an uncontrollable art, incomprehensible and like most things in life, will likely not last. Moving aside for the next big thing to come along. That my friend, is simply: The Movies. I talk about them, because it is what I know. It is a tool and an entertaining one at that, to serve as a gateway on how to look at the world around me.

I am not a great man, nor do I wish to be one. I have for lack of better argument, always been content with who I am. But I know you do not wish to hear this, you already likely know this about yourself. In fact, it is how everyone should feel regardless of what they've done or where they're going. Everything else is throwing feathers in a glass house hoping to hear the sound of a volcano.

...Any problem I ever had in life was solved by the Movies. Believe it!

No sir, some of my greatest joys and spiritual experiences in life did not always come from attending mass, praying night and day; or even connecting with other human beings in certain social activities (though that can be highly enjoyable too). No siree, some of those great