Soylent Green (1973) and the Current State of Society

-I will be looking at elements of the movie Soylent Green (1973) and trend towards our society moving toward the situations presented in the movie. It's not as long a stretch from todays reality and the dystopia of the movie.

-Growing divide between rich and poor. We are now and have been seeing since the 1980’s the growing divide between workers and the rich owners. The rights of the workers and unions have been drastically eroded over the years, and it's only getting worse. The profits of the corporations like Loblaws were at record levels in the year 2020, but a shady supply disruption drove up prices. We know from the past that the prices never go down after these gouges. In the last few years we have seen the richest of the rich vastly extend their wealth reserves and corporations are at a low point in giving back to society with charity. The average full time worker now in North America has trouble paying rent and getting food at the same time. In the day, a worker could afford to have entertainment and now that tends to come at the cost of debt load. The best part is the middle class did not care about the lower class workers until it started to happen to them - now it’s an injustice to their thinking. Sadly humanity tends to be like that, if it’s not happening to them, they don’t care.

-Systemic abuse of power. The use of the police who have been militarized in modern times, to destroy homeless camps and literally break the law by destroying the property of the homeless and driving them into the cold and damp with no shelter is common in the bigger cities in Canada and the USA. The friendly cop seems to be a rare trend these days and instead you get an attitude from them and that “respect my authority” mindset is common with cops now. The cops are the thugs of the political machine now and protect the interests of the rich before those of the common person. Abuse and even great harm is more common with cops now.

-Global warming and climate change. It’s a documented fact that the average temperature of the planet is going up slowly and is starting to be a threat to our environment to the point that in 100 years we may not be able to grow food in most parts of the planet. The seas are being flooded by fresh water from ice caps melting. This may affect coastal areas to a point of flooding cities. There have been many movies that showed flooded cities in the future, it’s very possible. The damage does not seem to matter to the wealthy and the future effects are not even thought of by them. In fact, they tend to go out of their way to discredit science and recorded measurements and effects.

-Holding of wealth and resources. The rich don’t do anything with the wealth, they keep it. 90% of the world's money is held in banks and investments and helps not one common person in any way. Resources are also being hoarded by countries like the USA who are now actively attacking other countries to harvest the resources of these countries. The sovereignty of many lands are at threat so that the rich USA members of industry can make more wealth to no end. We live in a world with limited resources and the acceleration of consumption of these resources will only end in depletion. The rise of AI and robotics will in the future service the needs and demands of the very few and the rest of us will be no more than workers or a class of people left to scavenge for their living.

-Dehumanizing people. People are not seen as people anymore by the system instead they are part of the machine that produces wealth and no more. Their health, safety and comfort, or even ability to eat properly is ignored and the people are consumed instead of us worked with. The day of people being important to the system is long over. We are now just a means to gather wealth, or to support the progenerating of false information and keep us divided instead of united.

-Consumerism causing scarcity. The increased desire to consume products of all kinds by the people is caused by the assertion of the rich that people will spend on comforts like food box subscriptions or dog toy subscriptions. The idea that you need these to show how much more important you are than the guy next door can’t be ignored. The disposable nature of most consumer goods now not only leads to full land fills, but to the depression of resources. In 100 years or so, not much will be left.

-State funded assisted suicide. Now I have actually backed this for many years, but the ability to abuse this tool for the benefit of the government saving money is not lost on me. In Soylent Green there are places you can go to be disposed of. The fact that in the movie they were recycling them into food is not something I think will be happening any time soon. But it’s already happened when a person has been given the option of assisted death instead of fixing or even managing their medical issues. Will it become mandatory in the future? It’s a possibility I’m not able to ignore. The step to disposal of the disabled, the old and the unwanted is not a big one at this point. There is a push now from a group for abortion after birth. Yes this has been hyped and is not happening in reality at the time of this post, but the logic is to end their suffering and keep them from being a burden to the system and the parents.

-Lack of empathy is a cultural norm. To say the least, the amount of videos where people laugh at people being hurt in an accident is impossible to ignore. People see service workers as things and will abuse them and never give a second thought about it. This is the norm now it seems. Most people only care about themselves or their close family. The needs of others are not important. We see it when there is a threat in the minds of people like the pandemic. They go and grab up as much stuff as they can and to hell with the others out there who might need to have some of these things for their children. Even medication shortages happened where over the counter drugs were grabbed up on mass. Empathy is all but dead now.