Why I watch Films for Action

I wrote about why I watch RT last week. This week, I want to focus on my favorite website: Films for Action. It’s a fairly popular site, but doesn’t get nearly the amount of traffic RT gets on YouTube. People watch RT to get answers they don’t get on the MSM. RT is largely political. Films for Action covers a range of topics, including political topics, but also offers something neither the MSM nor RT has to offer.

Both the Western media and RT have political agendas. While RT doesn’t try to stir up fear and hatred as much as the Western MSM does, it still presents the news from a political angle and rarely steps out of the political arena to look at the bigger picture facing humanity. Films for Action frequently looks at the bigger picture and offers solutions that should be obvious, but aren’t because of our conditioning. The site spells out its agenda in the article, From Empire to Earth Community: 10 Principles of the More Beautiful World We Know is Possible, by Ashish Kothari. The article begins:

If the aim of human society is happiness, freedom, and prosperity, there are indeed many alternative ways to achieve this without endangering the earth and ourselves, and without leaving behind half or more of humanity.

This is a topic that’s rarely addressed in the popular media, online or on TV. We are conditioned to believe we have to look to our “leaders” for answers. Americans actually believe they are free because they have the right to vote. Never mind that no President, Senator or member of Congress has put a dent in a system that favors the wealthy and powerful. As I write this, it looks like it’s going to be Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton in this year’s election. Only an American could believe either of those candidates can give us the radical change we need in the world.

Kothari’s article points out an alternative:

It is also not one solution or blueprint, but a great variety of them. These would include systems once considered valuable but now considered outdated and ‘primitive’: subsistence economies, barter, local haat- [traditional market] based trade, oral knowledge, work-leisure combines, the machine as a tool and not a master, local health traditions, handicrafts, learning through doing with parents and other elders, frowning upon profligacy and waste, and so on. This does not mean an unconditional acceptance of traditions — indeed there is much in traditional India that needs to be left behind — but rather a re-considered engagement with the past, the rediscovery of many valuable practices which seem to have been forgotten and building on the best of what traditions offer.

Films for Action frequently reminds me that “small is beautiful.” In a world that is becoming frighteningly centralized and dependent on corporations, it gives us an alternative: a world that cohabits in smaller units. We don’t need Monsanto to provide us with food. We don’t need Nestle to provide us with water. We don’t need BP or Exxon to provide us with fuel. We don’t need coal or nuclear power plants to provide us with electricity. All of these giant corporations have one thing in common: they pollute the earth and make us slaves to money. They are the primary reason for war, poverty and misery, but the media tries to make us believe they represent progress and hope for the future. It’s frightening how readily we buy into that line.

Short films like We are Built to be Kind remind me that greed is not the human condition, but an aberration. Films like Who Are You? and Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed remind me that we have been molded into corporate and financial slaves. Yes, I watch RT, but Films for Action is my favorite website because it reminds me of what we already know: our salvation lies in cooperation, compassion and kindness, not competition, selfishness and hatred.