Among the many movies that I’ve watched over the course of my childhood, none have struck me as a vividly as Pearl Harbour. Released in 2001 by blockbuster director Michael Bay (of Transformers fame) it garnered poor reviews and endured countless insults for its cheesy scenes and pathetic attempts to squeeze as much life as possible out of a dying genre that had been used and abused for at least twenty years prior.Nonetheless, my favourite scene arrives at roughly two-thirds of the way into the movie where President Franklin D. Roosevelt reacts to news of the attack with visceral “shock and awe.” His Chief of Staff and military advisors respond with predictable epithets centering on the suddenness of the attack (“they took us by surprise”) or on the futility of counter-attack. In response, President Roosevelt scans the room, takes note of the expressions of defeat on the faces of his men, struggles to raise his crippled frame out of his wheelchair, stands precariously on his feet and then declares “Do not tell me it can’t be done!” It’s an awe-inspiring scene, and it’s especially sweetened by the phrase that incites such a burst of passion from this fictionalized president.
“Mr. President, with all due respect, what you’re asking can’t be done.”
Can’t be done. It can’t be done. There’s no use stressing over this situation, nothing’s going to change. If you’re even remotely irritated by statements like these, congratulations – that’s the right emotion. If you’ve ever been driven to actually do something in response to statements like these then congratulations once again, you’re no longer part of the rest of humanity that’s commonly referred to as “the herd.”
We live in a post-modern, consumerist society that corrals us into certain modes of behaviour based on what to buy, eat, wear and do (amongst other things). Our position and awareness of our place in society is defined overwhelmingly by our limitations, our constraints – or simply put, between what we do, and don’t have. We’ve been trained to understand that if we cannot afford something at a certain point in time, then we cannot have it (legally) at that particular point in time.
But an unfortunate effect of this type of daily conditioning is that it spills over into our perceptions of our own abilities, picking up a few flaws along the way. It influences our thought processes, teaching us to weigh our abilities to accomplish something against what we can and cannot do. Our thought processes exaggerate this perception, leading us to believe that if we cannot do something at a particular point in time, then it’s likely we never will be able to do it.
Ask yourself if you’ve ever encountered statements like these before:
“I’ve never studied science, I don’t think I could ever make myself understand what they talk about.”
“Math? I never understood that in high school, let’s not talk about it. I’m not very good with numbers.” [Cue in the nervous laughter]
“We can’t do that, it’s never been done before.”
“Don’t ask about that, it’s just not done.”
You may laugh, but take a look around, it happens to be a very prevalent mindset. What’s worse is that any form of unconventional thought that attempts to break this vicious circle of denigrating self-valuation is often countered with social ostracism, mockery or complete incredulity.
In the brilliant 1927 German expressionist film Metropolis, the protagonist Freder Fredersen encounters a giant man-eating machine that he interprets as the ravenous demon Moloch, swallowing up men whole without remorse. That’s how I envision the flip side of our modern society. Unlike our intellectual forefathers of yore, who were invigorated and challenged to rise above their immediate limitations, spurred on when people told them that what they were doing was “impossible” and “couldn’t be done”, most of our peers seem to have somehow crossed the apex on the parabola of human achievement, slowly and inexorably slipping down the other side into the maw of the demon of self-doubt and worse, inaction.
Remember Galileo Galilei? Against all odds, he continued to espouse a heliocentric model of the solar system even under pain of death. Or how about Darwin, who continued to support his Theory of Natural Selection in face of, as Einstein would have put it, “violent opposition from mediocre minds”?
The fact of the matter is that change as always been considered intolerable; the status quo badly in need of change forces people to continue to behave like cogs in some infernal man-eating machine, swallowing our ideas and hopes and dreams without remorse, without abandon, without thought, without consciousness. We become zombies, shuffling to and fro, living out our “lives of quiet desperation”, while the world watches on, silently beating its breast for change.
More than any time in history now is the time to take the initiative to make your voice heard. If you don’t like something, talk/blog/read/speak/argue/tweet/write about it. Don’t sit there expecting someone else to pick up the reins of change on your behalf and credit you for it. Be a Roosevelt, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela. We need more people like them. Without action, our thoughts are essentially just actions held in stasis. With effort, the stasis mode is switched off and power suit of achievement has the potential to be switched on.
If that sounds clichéd, at least take heed from an unlikely source of inspiration. I did. This is Satan, speaking out from across the valley of time, from the pages of John Milton’s Paradise Lost:
“Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!”
Use this demon’s advice to rid yourself of your own demons. The Molochs of this world need to be identified and dismantled. Let’s get going.
Contributed by: Prashanth Gopalan
Prashanth Gopalan is currently pursuing a degree in Biotechnology and Economics at the University of Waterloo. An avid reader and writer, he looks forward to respectfully challenging your opinion in the near future. Follow him on Twitter @prashgopalan and feel free to kick-start the next great discussion.
