Recently I watched a movie called Holy Man on television. It is about someone trying desperately to succeed in running shopping channels who finds help from a guru he meets on the road. This guru said something which I found interesting – that we have only 75 summers, 75 springs and so on. In the end the businessman realises that love is more important than career success. I liked the movie which was quite entertaining but I found it also superficial and patronising at the same time. It normalised working like crazy in your career, parodied but simultaneously celebrated the all or nothing attitude towards work as survival of the fittest and to hell with the losers. I do not imagine that anyone will change their life for the better as a result of this movie which is a shame as it was nice to see a Hollywood movie with a major star asking people to think about what is really important in life. Unfortunately the answer was love in the Hollywood tradition, nothing deeper than that.
Shortly afterwards I saw an advert on television for a website which helps you to search for a loan company or credit card provider which is most likely to give you more credit. In other words a search machine for creating bad debt. I found this shocking. Yet would the businessman in the movie have run a site like this, even after finding love and losing his job. Of course he would …
When I now reflect on this movie and this advert, I feel despondency for the human race.