  I went to see the Matrix Reloaded movie...ahhh that was a kick ass film...I have a feeling this year will be a panicopia of films. All sequels...but so far all of the sequels have kicked ass! So lemme tell you about Reloaded. Reloaded and Revolutions were filmed at the same time for around 300 million...of that roughly half of the budget went into "wow" effects...in other words CG and Special Effects...and lemme tell you they certainly got their bang for the buck! It simply kicked much ass. Some people have complained that there is no story and that it is just a long action sequence...and well there is a story and it is bolstered by the action most definitely.
There is one scene in the movie where the "evils" of man is being explained and they flash Hitler, the A-Bomb and some other things...then they flash across the screen both of the President Bushs'...to call them evil is going a little far...but I will say neither man has lived up to "good" standards...so I can see where they are coming from (even though I did vote for this Bush in the last election).
The story is simple...after thinking about ten minutes about it I got it. You have to wait till the end of the movie before they really "bend your noodle" but it is well worth the wait. So here is the story in a short and simple fashion. Mankind goes in cycles. History goes in cycles. Everything that was will be again and everything that is will be destroyed. Throughout history mankind has built up many great civilizations. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptions, Syrians, English, Spanish, French, Russians, Japanese, and even Germans.
They all built empires that eventually imploded and left the regions decimated and in tatters. People may say "well the Americans haven't done that and we will not repeat the fate of those other great nations and civilizations. " Well folks we will repeat it...over and over again. Sure once America per se is gone another great power in the world will grow and take over, but it too will fall in time. Humans are doomed to repeat history...its as simple as that. However. There is one way that we can defeat history and move forward and continue on our journey through time. The only way to do that is to shed the old, get rid of the old way of doing things such as building wealth, building power, and rid ourselves of our fudal past. How you ask. First we need to stop looking at everything as a competition. We all compete on a daily basis. We compete for a better lane position at a red light, we compete for the hottest chick on the dancefloor, we compete for world resources. Sure competition drives technology and drives humans to do better things, but at the same time we take the competition to far in many cases. We compete out of fear and intolerance. History has taught us that this competition only drives us to failure in the end because no one can have everything.
Not everyone can have unlimited resources and expect the rest of the world or people of the world to go with this ideal willingly. We are in that same situation right now. America has become resource needy. We need massive amounts of everything to just survive as we see it. We need billions of barrels of oil to function anually. We need billions of metric tons of natural gas to heat our homes. We simply need to much to get by. Now if it were only us in the world that might not be so bad. But we are but a small portion of the worlds population yet we consume the most resources by far.
How can we stop it. How can we not repeat history. Well I really don't have all the answers, but I do know this. We need to be more tolerant of other peoples needs in the world. We are the richest nation on the Earth yet we have massive amounts of people without even basic health care coverage, yet don't seem to mind sending billions of dollars to Africa to "stop" AIDS. Is that a bad thing trying to stop AIDS in Africa...no it isn't, but the money would be better spent on developing cures and vaccines for the AIDS virus...then once we have those drugs we could easily erradicate AIDS everywhere. A worldwide innoculation campaign to stop it. We spend more money on learning about the male erection than we do on many diseases...in all our priorities are fucked up.
Another step would be to start giving services away. No I am not talking about making everything for free...that wouldn't work either because to many people would simply choose not to do anything and sooner or later that type of system would crash...but basic things like food, water, drugs, health care...make those things a non-issue...a happy well fed people are generally healthier, and less violent. If we fix things here first...and we make really significant changes here then we can export those changes and guess what...those people who have less then us all of a sudden don't have less then us. They have food, health care...they have the means in which to live. We need to stomp out materialism. I know I know...I love my toys and gadgets and fancy things as much as everyone else. I love sitting in front of a computer with two Flat Panel Screens and having my desk cluttered with electronic gadgets...do I need them all. No. However they do make life more bearable. Does everyone need these things...yes. We all need some level of materialism. It helps us...makes us feel better about ourselves...are these things nesecary for life...nope...but they make life a little more fun. We live in an unprecidented time folks. We have a lot of choices to make. We can choose to get along and bring everyone to a reasonable level of "consumerism" and "materialism" yet function as a planet.
But that is a choice that has to made. It has to made by people, it has to made by the leaders. We fight amongst ourselves like five years olds fighting over a swing. We can choose to make things better. We can choose to drive more efficient vehicles and demand that the government mandate that...we can choose that car companies make more efficient vehicles and move towards alternative fuels...we can choose that here because we have a system that is based on market demand. We can choose with our dollars. We can choose with our votes politicians or people with better world views. People that see the problems and choose to say something about it and try to do something to correct them. Face it folks if we don't choose to go down the path that hasn't been traveled before then we choose to repeat history. The old well worn path is easy to follow. It is the new untested path that we have never chosen to go down before that will lead to our salvation as a nation and a species. There are so many bigger problems out there. We could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow...we have no plans for that...hell we only scan 2 percent of the sky for rogue rocks headed our way.
We will run out of oil soon. Our entire world that we know is oil based. Many synthetic products start their lives as oil. We can choose to move to alternative energy sources and spend billions on learning how to "do" fusion instead of building new nuclear weapons. All of these things we have the power to do. But because it is so much more difficult to do that than to keep the status quo we always choose the easier path. And that my friends is the quandry we face. Do we choose to go the easy way. Or do we choose to go the harder way. Red Pill or Blue Pill. The choice is yours. 
