"Corruption... is why we WIN"

I'm in the middle of writing a new year's blog, but I haven't finished (EDIT: It's finished now! See below!). So for now, I decided to write about the movie I watched last week: Syriana.

I don't know if you guys ever heard of this movie at all, but I saw an ad banner on it one day and it interested me. I watched the trailer and I was hooked. The Middle East, oil, big oil company, conspiracy, corruption, betrayal... ooh... sounds like fun! I also read a lot of people's feedback during the Christmas holiday, and it was all pretty positive. I had to watch it.

So I did. It's definitely one of those movies that I need to rewatch again later when it comes out on DVD. The plot itself wasn't confusing, but the vast amount of characters that are presented are a bit hard to keep track. You can go to the movie website here: Syriana to watch the trailer to get an idea of what it's about. While I hate to sound very negative and all, but this movie is like a reflection of my worldview-made-real. I love it.

The feeling I got when I left the movie was that most people would probably walk out feeling lost, confused, or just wondering, "what was the point to that?" Well, if you went to that movie expecting to see something shocking or action-packed/full of intrigue, then you'll probably be disappointed and/or confused.

Just to be safe, I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone but I'm just worried I might so don't read past this point if you don't want to be spoiled or ruin your movie-viewing experience.

What happens in this movie shouldn't surprise you in any way. If you're appalled by what you see, then you really need to get your head out of your ass and take a hard long look at the world around you. If you just simply shrugged and said, "So?", then you definitely fit right in with why the world is the way it is right now. I'm not saying this by being self-rightious and berate everyone for it though. Because in truth, I'm just as guilty. In fact, we're ALL guilty in some way directly or indirectly. If any of you ever watched "The Corporation" documentary, you should know what I mean. It's about companies, national interests, and the simple fact that there's a really high price to pay if we want to achieve an idealistic world.

We demand good stuff for cheap. We want to receive a good, HIGH salary. How do you think one achieves that? Why do you think everything is coming from places like China, India, and other countries where standards of living are low and people are paid relatively NOTHING in comparison to what we would get here? Because we demand it as consumers. We would expect nothing less and companies have to accomplish that one way or another. Shareholders demand the company turns a profit. Well, you can see where this is going.

Documentaries like The Corporation and movies like Syriana should really just make you pause and wonder if the life we've created should be changed... and if so, can it? Hate to be pessimistic, but it's hard to turn back 2-300 years of human civilization. It would take an outright catastrophe to change anything simply because people are too used to this. To implement such a HUGE change... it would take a complete re-education and new mindset... and I don't know if that would be possible. Of course, the important thing is, everything starts with within. It would take the whole world to choose to change for it to happen. Which is why I keep bringing up the word "catastrophe". I mean, how else do you convince billions of people to do the same thing willingly? =P