Tomorrowland was one of the more maligned and ignored “blockbusters” from the summer of 2015, which is ironic when considering the movie’s attempt at being a “canary in the coal mine concerning contemporary society.  The idea behind telling stories about the end of the world, the movie’s antagonist asserts, was to get people to do something to avert disaster.  Instead, they turned it into video games and movies, basically making themselves numb to what was actually going on around them.  Instead of being calls to action, such things normalized the worse-off reality.

There’s something of that in Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic.  He doesn’t go far as to “cry wolf” on total disaster because, after all, humans are an inventive lot.

But human beings are resilient and adaptable, we adjust to difficulties and grow accustomed to problems.  Projections that suggest we won’t are rarely plausible. . . This may sound like good news, but it isn’t.  It suggests that no action-forcing cataclysm will compel us to turn things around . . . Prophesying total meltdown is not the way to draw people’s attention to this failure to flourish.  The problem we face is not the risk of cataclysm, but the acceptance of widespread despair and disorder in the lives of millions of our fellow citizens.  We risk getting used to living in a society that denies a great many of its most vulnerable people the opportunity to thrive.

We do a great job regularly adapting to whatever the “new normal” is, it seems.  Yuval is concerned that such a disposition will work against us.  He also believes that we are so used to doomsday scenarios from both ends of the political spectrum that we assume it’s all crying wolf.  For Levin, the best message to give others comes from a common, lived experience.  “Show us people who are living life well,” he seems to suggest.  And he’s right.  I feel that way often in education, where doomsday and magic potion options abound.  Our tendency is to jump to the next easy fix, regardless of whether or not anyone has actually tried it.  So work it out first, work through the kinks, and then show us the implications and possibilities for the better solution.

Here’s the scene from Tomorrowland where Hugh Laurie’s character explains the reasoning behind his actions.  It’s actually a decent movie.  Probably a little too much build-up.  I think that it might regain some critical ground in the long run.  Guess we’ll have to wait to find out.