I saw the movie "Children of Men" last night. Before I begin to talk about it and its ideas, I want to make a firm statement telling all of you to see it as well. It's a finely crafted, beautifully executed film that can move even that asshole Ironman.
Okay, onto the good stuff.
The premise is that the end of the human race is nigh. Women and men have become inexplicably infertile and a childs cry hasn't been heard in over 18 years.
It's pre-apocolyptic in a sense.
The entire world is falling apart in this despair and even the so-called "haven", England, is falling apart to terrorism and destruction.
However, there is hope. A simple rumor of a collection of sages working together for the extension of the human race. Of course, it's only believed in by those who see UFOs on the daily and smoke weed.
But it's hope nonetheless.
But I didn't come here to write a summary of the story.
I came to talk about something that has been on my mind since the movie ended.
Seeing those potential mothers in such despair and those fathers in dreaming in equal torment nearly broke my heart.
You begin to ask yourself, what's the point of doing anything if you have no one to share it with. To pass it onto.
To brag to and impress.
The youngest person alive was 18 and after that...
Nothing.
Can you imagine NOTHING being the only thing in your fellow mans future?
Some creatures solely live to procreate. They die shortly after. Salmon spend their whole lives preparing for that moment. They battle with unspeakable odds, go under gruesome (and kind of creepy) transformations, and fight the good fight. But it's all gone after the eggs have been laid. They die.
But THEY as a species do not!
They may die, but in half a blink of Gods eye their little babies are at it, just the same as their parents. They live on, carrying on the salmon way.
What if that stops?
We would have no future as a race. Nothing to dream about for our children.
Not even children to dream for.
If we have any rights as living creatures, it is to procreate just like the rest of the breathing Earth.
To lose that right is terrifying. To all-of-a-sudden lose hold of the most sacred and ancient right, it's to die instantly.
Maybe not yourself, maybe you live a horrendously long time.
But your race dies.
You future as mankind dies.
Although it may be attributed to wonderful acting, the hopelessness of those women who could no longer bear the noble title of Mother brought me to a multitude of unadulterated and unstoppable tears.
It was the absolute blackest truth of having no future.
And I tell you, my friends, I wept at the face of such a "future". I cried for every baby that didn't exist to cry. I cried for every woman that couldn't get to cry on their kids' first day of school. I cried for every man who didn't get to walk a daughter down the aisle.
What a black, black future that could be.
Let's cross our fingers.
