Unbalanced Life

 "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."

"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."

"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans." 

Hopi Prophecies

When Koyaanisqatsi was just released, my parents brought my brother and me to Amsterdam to see a live screening in the Stopera, the Amsterdam City Hall and Opera house. It was the 80’s of the previous century and I was in my early teens. I remember being curious but also not wanting to go, at that age I was more interested in Star Wars and playing football with my friends on the field opposite to our home.

 But we went and I had no choice but to sit down and immerse myself in what I now, upon looking back, consider a transformational experience. Obviously, being in a beautiful concert hall with hundreds of people all dressed up for the occasion itself is overwhelming for a young child, but once both Philip Glass, Michael Riesman and the concert came onto stage and the audience clapped their hands in a constant crescendo even before the music hit the first notes was just a hint of what was to come next.

 Putting into text what Koyaanisqatsi displays and the music that enhances, or rather, elevates, the visualization of our planet and humanity, is impossible. The only way to experience the experience is by taking the time and enjoy the film & music from the very moment it starts until (and no earlier) the credits rolled. But what the film displays and the stories it tells are up to the spectator. It’s an individual experience and it tells you so many stories at once. It shows nature in all its grandeur, and to me, it shows humanity with its almost lethargic ways of destroying that grandeur and splendor in a mere moment of time.

 There are scenes of mountains, rockets, people in New York, the moon rising, the sun setting, the inner workings of factories as well as buildings being demolished. It was a visual representation, a mélange of music and imagery, that I hadn’t experienced ever before. And it made me want to research, distill what all of it meant to me. As an example, one section of the movie (for lack of a better word) shows the collapse and demolition of the Pruit Igoe complex in Saint Louis. While the images show you how much power humans possess to destroy, it also tells you how we’re so incredibly great at failure. Pruit Igoe was an urban housing project that failed not long after its inception, an inevitable demise with poverty, crime and racial segregation as the catalyst. Pruit Igoe became what’s now labeled an “icon of failure of urban renewal”. There’s a fascinating documentary that’s absolutely worth watching, called the “Pruit Igoe Myth” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pruitt-Igoe_Myth check it out.

 The reason why the prophecies of the Hopi Indians come back to haunt me nowadays, is that we’re living in the midst of them. The word Koyaanisqatsi from the Hopi language means “Unbalanced Life” and unless you’re willfully ignorant, one can only admit that their visionary words have long become real. I can list at length the problems we as humans face, as there are so many, and many nowadays are starting to affect western societies as well, for example viruses, hunger and poverty that were long a threat to only continents such as Africa or Asia have become a global threat to humanity.

On top of that, our globalism, our heavy industry to serve cravings we didn’t know we even had, our constant harvesting of resources to keep our industries running are in turn ruining our planet. Instead of a symbiosis between humans and nature, between us and our planet, there’s parasitism. It’s happening and it’s happening now.

 The point of this article is not to educate anyone on what to do or to prove my moral superiority over yours. Anyone in their right mind is aware of climate change and how we should all try to live a life not based on consumption but on preservation and from that creation. We all know we have an obligation to protect each other, to keep each other safe during the global pandemic (so please just wear that fucking mask). Everyone should be willing and able to help their fellow men, those living in poverty, those oppressed for race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or whatever the reason humans have invented to have more for themselves and less for the other. We all know we should be acting as (local) communities and donate to charity to those who are less fortunate than many of us. If someone stumbles and falls, we help each other up. There are small things we can do, there’s larger things we can achieve. Helping one another for a better future for this planet and our children is not binary.

 Because Life is out of Balance.