Last night I caught Surviving Progress as part of the Environmental Film Festival at Yale running this week until April 15. The documentary is by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks with interviews with geneticists, economists, primatologists, financial analysts, and scientists regarding “business as usual” and if our conceived and applied economic systems are sustainable. The premise of the film is that our brain circuitry, as a species, hasn’t evolved for over 50,000 years, and that our genetic make-up is based on short-term, “fight or flight” gratification, gain, and survival tactics that don’t take into account, say, living beyond the age of thirty-five and together in enormous, high-consumption communities with increasingly scarce resources—whether these are land, clean water and air, food, or fuel.
