article by LiveReal Agent Thomas

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Al Gore, movie star, is now the leading man in a movie with a message.

The message basically says something like this:

unless we get our minds right, all of us will be facing a "major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction..."

Look out, Tom Cruise! There's a new star in town...

Obviously, major catastrophes - especially the ones complete with "epic destruction" are something almost all of us, hopefully, would prefer to avoid.

But there's something, it seems to me - something really important - that the movie is missing.

Namely, there is another "inconvenient truth" that old Al doesn't mention.

Here it is:

We're all going to die.

This isn't a frantic, alarmist, hysterical hyped-up message on the evening news. It's not a captivating, gripping, "details at 11!" story that a news anchor, armed with gallons of hair spray, will likely pay much attention to. And it sure isn't mentioned - directly - in Al Gore's film about the environment.

And we can't really blame them. After all, most folks don't really think this is a very fun and exciting topic. In fact...mention this at a party, and most of the time you can start counting the seconds before the nice folks around you start scattering like cockroaches.

So yes: it's disturbing...and unpopular...and not exactly a topic of conversation that a lot of people like thinking about very much.

In fact, you could say that...well, it's very "inconvenient."

But it is the truth.

We're all going to die.

Now, the fact that "we're all going to die" doesn't mean that it will necessarily happen in the next year, or ten years, or ninety years.

But eventually it will.

And it's not just you and me that it will happen to. Everybody we know and care about - everybody we love and laugh and cry and hang out with...

- well, the same thing's going to happen to them.

And even if we have kids, and grandkids, and great-great-grandkids, and even if they all have great-great-grandkids...well...

- like we all know at some level, it seems...they're all going to die eventually, too.

Even the Earth itself has an appointment with the Grim Reaper. Say it somehow manages to survive the blundering ineptitude of us humans for the next ten, or fifty, or five hundred years. As LiveReal Agent Ben is so fond of saying: "There's always the heat death of the universe."

So, why do we mention this now? Why bring all this unpleasantness up at all?

This is an image of the earth, in 20 billion years, if we don't stop global warming .

Well, part of Al's message in the film says that every person on the entire planet might face death...unless we really get our act straight and start driving Hybrids and carpooling and so on.

But what we're saying here is this:

even if we do get our act straight, and everyone starts driving Hybrids, and carpooling, and shooting anyone who drives an SUV on-site...

- even with all that...we're all still going to die.

Again, this isn't saying that "if x and y and z happens, then we all might die."

No - even if nothing happens, and the Earth in a few hundred or thousand years is more or less in the exactly same shape as it is right now...

- we're all still going to die.

...not "might" die; will die.

Now, of course, this all seems a little gloomy, and depressing, and if I were saying this at a cocktail party, I'm sure everybody would now scatter like cockroaches if they hadn't already scurried off by now.

But wait: I'm not just trying to acid-rain on everybody's parade; and there is, I believe, a good reason for bringing this up (even if we haven't talked about it yet).

The reason is this: "An Inconvenient Truth" implies, to a degree, that if we all get our minds right - if we all start driving Hybrids and carpooling and so on - then we won't die.

(Of course, it never says that directly - hence the word "implies" - and I'm sure that everyone involved in the film - and even the folks who have seen it - will disagree. Nevertheless, I would hold that it's still true...even if it is inconvenient.)

After all, if every time there was a rally cry to "save the environment!" - there was someone there who would point out, calmy and matter-of-factly, that "even if we do succeed at this (say, hunting down all the whale-hunters, destroying all the rainforest-destroyers, etc)...we're all going to die anyway" - I have a hard time believing that it wouldn't take at least a little bit of the steam out of the party.

Because in fact, there's nothing necessarily deeply heroic about our motivations to "save the planet!". It's just the survival instinct. In fact, when we really examine it, we actually don't care about saving the planet; what we really care about is saving ourselves.

- again, not that there's anything wrong with saving ourselves. Let's just be honest about it.

And to be clear, I'm not advocating that anyone should actually throw up their hands, give up the battle and start spraying Lysol all over the atmosphere. I have nothing against "save the environment!" rallies and "let's keep sewage out of our drinking water" movements and so on, to the degree that they do good, and perhaps more important, are sane.

And the way I see it, what keeps them sane is them - and us - knowing their - and our - real position in the scheme of things: even if we succeed at patching up the ozone layer or whatever...we aren't cheating death. At best, we're just postponing it a little. Even for the planet.

OK, so now we're faced with a problem. The enviroment, many scientists say, faces many possible dangers and may be - in a worst-case scenario - ruined.

Meanwhile, all of us, I say, face one certainty - death - and one day - even if we get our best case scenario - will be dead.

Now, while the "Inconvenient Truth" film lays out a terrible fate, and offers us a strategy and plan avoid it...here I come along, spoiling even that party, saying that this strategy and plan - even if it saves the planet - won't save you, or me, or anybody else we know or ever will know.

(So it seems that I not only spoil the party, but I spoil the party and the other party-spoilers themselves. When you reject even the rejects, or rebel even against the rebels...who do you hang out with then? No wonder I watch so many movies...)

But I'm not trying to spoil anybody's party. I'm not trying to discourage any good and sane people who care about protecting the world they live in. And despite what everybody seems to think...I don't simply get my kicks by making things seem as depressing, gloomy, or hopeless as possible.

No - because despite the scientific certainty and experiential inevitabilities of our existential predicaments...I actually have a great deal of hope.

Hope?

Yes.

...because the problem of death is one that every one of us - in fact, every human who has ever lived on this planet, and ever will - faces, in one way or another.

So not only is it one thing we all have in common...but it's also something we can do something about.

Meaning, if "death" is a problem - even The Problem of life - then automatically, this brings up the question:

is there a solution?

And that, my dear reader, is one of the things - and perhaps, in a way, even the only thing - that us crazy LiveReal Agents are in hot pursuit of.

After all, many individuals have confronted this problem before...and some even claim to have found answers.

This is an image of the earth, in 20 billion years, if we do stop global warming.

For example, some say that death, actually, does not really exist.

Others say that death does exist, but it's not really the kind of problem we think it is.

Others say that death exists, if nothing else, to remind us to get the absolute most out of life that we possibly can, before it's our time to make the trip. (And how do we do that? Well, that's yet another conversation...)

Others say that death exists, but what seems to be "death" is actually a new birth into a new kind of life, that's better (or worse, but that's a whole other conversation) than this one.

Others say that we're living in a prison on death row, and trapped in the body of a dying animal, and so on...so our time here is best spent working to escape that prison, or working on a vehicle that will allow us to escape that last ride in a hearse.

Others say that death is simply nothing to worry about.

Others say that the best way to spend your life on this planet is to become aware of this situation you're living in - as a living creature who is going to die - and to work to find a solution to this problem. In other words, to find the answer to death...before death finds you.

...and there are many others.

So, who is right?

How many different perspectives and theories and beliefs are there? And out of all those perspectives and theories and beliefs, are any of them more true and valid than any others? If they are, how do we know? And even if we find it, will that help us, before the time comes for us to make the trip ourselves?

Well, one thing seems certain: it's better to face this problem directly than to work at solving it indirectly. Meaning, if we're all working to solve the problem of life and death, then it seems better to confront the real issues and questions and tasks individually, face-to-face, than to try to work out the problem through a substitute. And while good hygiene and global sanitation is of course a really good idea...it's not the kind of thing to build a new religion out of.

And as for everything else...well, this is one of the things - or maybe even the only thing - that we are working to discover, here at LiveReal.

So stay tuned...

P.S.
Save the planet!

Talk about it:
info@livereal.com

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