The Fuck It Point

The Fuck It Point

Savage Revival (2012)

Film Review

The Fuck It Point occurs when you fear the evil of the current system more than you fear actively organizing to tear it down. A growing number of activists around the world have reached this point (which Paul Hawken discusses in Blessed Unrest). We still have a little further to go to reach critical mass.

The specific fears that deter people from attempting to dismantle the current economic system are fear of losing privilege, fear of police brutality, fear of imprisonment, fear of death, fear of chaos and instability, fear of failing and, most importantly, fear that other people will think badly of us.

After summarizing a wealth of evidence that capitalism is doomed, The Fuck It Point asks whether it makes more sense to let it collapse on its own or to take active steps to dismantle it. The filmmakers maintain if we sit and waiting for the crash, the people who have prepared will “hold all the cards.”

The film focuses a lot of attention on corporate media manipulation that promotes apathy and passivity. Even when peoples know they’re being ruthlessly exploited, they can be too psychological paralyzed to do anything.

The public relation industry continually recycles do-nothing messages. One day they tell us that climate change and mass extinction is easily fixed with the right technology. The next day that the ecosystem is too far gone to do anything. The day after that they blame us for the global ecological crisis and urge us to buy more eco-friendly products.

The film also challenges the myth that humans can no longer survive without civilization. The obvious reality is that human beings can’t survive without clean, non-toxic air, water and food and robust social relationships – which are increasingly difficult to access under the current system. People find the idea of giving up civilization unthinkable because they are addicted to it.

The filmmakers estimate that only 1/7 of the current global population achieve real benefit from our current economic system. The other 6/7 would experience an immediate improvement in their life circumstances if it collapsed.

The Social Change Movement is Larger than You Think

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World

Paul Hawken
Google Authors (2007)

Film Review

In the following video, social entrepreneur Paul Hawken discusses Blessed Unrest, his book about trying to count the millions of local social change groups around the world. After several years of research, he concluded there were 1-2 million of them. They involve 100-200 million people and focus around three broad categories: social justice, human rights and ecological restoration. What they all have in common are their efforts to disperse a pathological concentration of power in a wealthy elite.

Hawken asserts this massive movement is virtually invisible because it’s solution-focused, rather than ideological. We’re accustomed to movements in which a charismatic white male leader founds a centrally-based organization and endeavors to expand it outwards to the grassroots. The movement Hawken refers started as small widely dispersed independent groups which are beginning to coalesce into networks.

He believes this diverse non-centralized movement had its origins in the anti-slavery movement. The past 1,000 years, in Hawken’s view, has been dominated by a system in which political power is based on privilege. With the abolitionist movement, which started as small local groups in England and the US, society began moving towards a system in which political power is based on community.

The high point of the video is where he scrolls through a screen shot listing the millions of groups. He asserts it would take more than four weeks to read through them all.

He predicted the number of social change groups, which is growing fast, would reach five million by 2013.