This was interesting for me on a personal level. For one, and a rather unremarkable one, I used to live around the corner from the BBC's Bristol studios (the same studios that made all of Attenboroughs documentaries, BBC 2) and often passed those studios on my way to work from my gloomy apartment around the corner in Bath Road, Brislington. I remember a gnawing sense of longing. I wanted to walk into those doors and offer my services (imagination, creativity, enthusiasm, vision, passion, talent for photography, theatricality) and also make, or be involved in, making documentaries. It seemed to me that showing people nature could do more good than learning the intricacies of how nature functioned. Nature, I knew, was desperately in need of a giant PR agency. But alas I never walked through those doors. The movie in my head saw me approaching a secretary who would say, "Well, do you have any experience? Oh you're here on a work visa?"
Attenborough can be credited with a singularly remarkable achievement: he encapsulated and represented to the human inhabitants of our world a complete picture of what our world is, and what it means to live here and for life to assert itself in myriads of environments. He did so, of course, by immersing himself in all sorts of environments, to the extent that a sentence on a segment on rocks in Tanzania was completed in a different country altogether. We were dazzled by the extent to which Attenborough got himself to the epicentre of his story.
My own experience of Attenborough was quite profound. I remember as a young child being unusually conflicted by the reason and logic and sense in evolution, and the altruism and apparent cultural cohesion of religion. And so I remember literally taking my father's copy of David Attenborough's LIFE ON EARTH and my bible, and matching up Attenborough's chronological account of evolution with the story in Genesis. I was gratified and quite satisfied with myself that the two ideas overlapped quite comfortably. It took a number of years for the Christian myth to wear off...but I suppose it was helped along by the steady deterioration of our planet and our prospects as we became increasingly distracted and depressed, delusional and caught up in rabid consumption.
I had developed a friendship with a young girl in Cheshire, Nathalie Seddon, who went on to do a PH.D in Zoology. And in our 10 years of correspondence we differed on the issue on 'how to save the world'. Her view was similar to Attenborough's. Science would save us, we needed to go out and discover, acquire knowledge. I know for example that she spent two years sleeping in a tent on the forest floor in Madagascar attempting to record the birdsong of a rare Madagascan bird. I believe she did. But although I could appreciate these incredible efforts, I doubted whether that recording would stop, for example, a Madagascan developer from bulldozing that tract of forest and turning it into a resort complex.
Attenborough himself has avoided preaching, but has said that we need to change our economics, our politics - our society in effect - if we are to continue to enjoy living in our world at all. The idea of our world facing any kind of global threat continues to seem alarmist and fanciful. And in this, we lack imagination, discernment and an apparatus to address this.
I believe popular culture is one of the most important tools. Unfortunately, popular culture has become incredibly noisy. If you are to induce cultural shifts you need to make brazen and potent statements. And in my opinion the most powerful art form, the largest audience for these sorts of statements is cinema.
I've studied economics and marketing so have some rudimentary knowledge about the markets and what drives them. More importantly, I understand what economists and marketers think, and how they think, and so why they are trapped in their bubbles of cleverness. It is incredibly difficult today to reach the educated masses and show them coherently and simply that their educated guesses are misinformed, and often ignorant.
So I agree with and understand the power movies...of what may seem like silly and fantastical stories that espouse an often dystopian but universal sentiment. Recent movies like the Dark Knight and Watchmen epitomise this especially, warning us that our troubles are real, that they're serious, and escalating. The most popular movie ever was Titanic, which is about the sinking of our hopes into a cold, dark sea.
I believe we know, deep down, the what the result will be of all our depredations. I differ from Seddon and Attenborough in that I think we need to address our issues boldly. I sternly disagree because I realise that not everyone is as conscious as Attenborough, or as intelligent as Ms. Seddon, or as conscientious as I am. But all people sense the truth, intuit that our behaviour needs to be urgently addressed, and a collective shift has to take place. We need some leadership and some courageous soap boxing to get momentum into this process. And people want that because it is essential. It's not an alternative, it's required for our survival.
This explains in part America's recent election of a President that has promised fundamental change, and represents that change to the world's diminishing superpower - Barack Obama.
The Shift I am referring to must be manifested in a comprehensive campaign. Cinema (popular culture) is one. The danger in cinema is that a film can be forgotten or dismissed or categorised as infotainment. Cinema itself is becoming more serious, and I predict that it will become more serious. We will see more serious documentary films coming out. There will in any event be less and less money for frivolity.
Right now most people have no clue how to feel about swine flu, or energy, or climate change, or religion, or economics, or the future of journalism, or whether antidepressants work, or how to work. Most people have become intensely dysfunctional. This needs to be accepted, admitted and addressed with a view to changing, empowering and educating. Not only ordinary populations, but leaders, governments, business people.
The movement might be called the New Deal, or the Real Deal, or The Era of Realism. I like the word Real, because in my view, it is our disconnect from reality that has brought about some very troubling crisis in our time.
Having witnessed the incredible work Attenborough has done - a man who has brought nature closer to more of us than any other people - I am inspired to inspire others to leverage that work beyond what Attenborough described as 'sharing how lovely the world is and leaving the rest unsaid'. I believe the 'unsaid' part of the conversation needs to be said. And that conversation has started. It's not warm and fuzzy. It's not always inspiring or heartening. In fact it is humbling and troubling. But once we've taken a full view we tend to feel activated and angry, galvanised and geared towards wanting to do something about it. Ignorance now, a lack of a complete paradigm is very dangerous. Too many voices argue muddying some obvious truths. We need to get to a clear mountaintop where we can see the forest fires, the smoky horison, the flames licking towards our homes and towns for ourselves.
For that we need a collective effort from writers, artists, filmmakers, bloggers, preachers, presidents, neighbors and bosses, to take hands, to courageously go and face reality. Talk about it, agree, and then take decisive actions in concert, and in groups to affect comprehensive, countrywide change. Because that is what is needed. And we're running thin on time and resources. But I imagine you already know that. This being the case, what are you going to do? And with whom?
Note: I for one try not to fill my mind with junk. I read a lot. I am writing on the subject [my view of reality] each day, and intent on making presentations and documentaries on the subject in order to reach a wider audience. Beyond this I try to live a sustainable lifestyle which involves less meat, more bicycling and a healthy lifestyle.
If you've found this manifesto interesting but you want to know more, I suggest reading:
The Long Emergency
World Made By Hand
Read a lot. Open your mind. Make a difference.
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