A Video To Inspire Our Species September 23, 2011

A Video To Inspire Our Species

By Hemant Mehta
September 23, 2011

I have no idea what just happened to me while I watched dogmaticCURE‘s latest video, but I suddenly feel inspired to grab a weapon, scream “THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!” and charge after my enemies.

Damn, that’s inspiring.

(YouTube commenters rightly point out that the collage of brilliant minds beginning at 6:17 consist only of men. That’s an unfortunate oversight.)

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  • Anonymous

    The whole video is men only, except for Rosa Parks @ 6:29 and one praying woman I don’t recognise @ 4:42.

  • Stefan

    6:17 — he did include Rosa Parks…but still, it’s about 93% male…

  • Reminds me a lot of the Science Saved My Soul video

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6w2M50_Xdk

  • Nicole S

    Eh, the last part doesn’t bother me. Due to society’s constraints, it’s only been pretty recently that many women had the opportunity to get full educations and excel in these avenues. I’m female, and these things don’t bother me. I have faith that it will improve with time. 

  • Tom

    Is it bad that at the very end of that, when he said the line, “and meet new civilizations” I mentally appended ” and kill them?”

    I love the idea behind it, but I suppose I’m either too cynical or too realistic (I feel it’s the latter, others may disagree) to believe that we’ll move beyond conflict.

    Although, perhaps the feeling that we can’t move beyond conflict instills in me the notion that violence can be an acceptable solution and therefore, by merely having that option on the table, reinforces that which permits us to morally justify violent actions.

  • OverlappingMagisteria

    And the statue of liberty!

  • Anonymous

    The men thing didn’t bother me much. Though I suppose you could have placed maybe Marie Curie in there, the fact is that due to the imposition of a strictly sexist society, until recently the number of significant men have vastly outnumbered the women.

    Is it bad that at the very end of that, when he said the line, “and meet new civilizations” I mentally appended ” and kill them?”

    Assuming we had any chance at all against them. I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

    The video is beautiful.

  • I suggest that the question isn’t fear vs our more civilized nature; it’s more our mastery of fear vs being its slave.

  • Anonymous

    My appended comment was “yeah, good luck with that.”  I, too, am just too cynical (not much of a realist) to think that the masses will embrace life without their invisible friend.  We will continue to deteriorate intellectually until we have full-blown idiocracy. 

    Hemant, I’m sending you the bill for the box of kleenex I just had to use because I’m bawling my eyes out here.

  • …and our insight into our own true nature and the nature of the cosmos undermined our fantasies about a supreme being who loved us and who sanctioned our hatred of others, and we got scared, and wanted to go backward in time, and we rejected the same critical thinking that made our survival possible,  and so our civilization failed, and we languished in self-imposed ignorance and darkness for a time, but our suffering was finally over, and we, like every other species eventually does, finally went extinct, and we became nothing but a thin black line in the sedimentary rock.

    …

    That is what is at stake in the choices we are making right now.

  • Grady

    Actually, the remark in the post about “grabbing my weapon” is also Priceless.

    Atheists have not hesitated to grab their weapons when it looked like they could establish power in a country.

    And if Officially Atheistic Countries, they used that power to kill MILLIONS of believers.

    It ain’t gonna happen here, because your loud mouths are warning the people in the churches.

  • societies around the world have been very sexist all throughout history. Women weren’t raised to be thinkers, entrepreneurs, inventors or innovators. It’s not to say that women can’t be those things, civilized societies just usually don’t give them the opportunity, tools and education to encourage and enable them. Don’t be mad at the video maker. It’s history’s fault.

  • “only when we base our knowledge on facts and evidence will we be able to connect to the true wonder of the universe and celebrate the miracle of life”

    Whenever I listen to atheistic messages there’s always part of my brain that is trying to see it through a theist’s eyes and ears and thinking of how they would respond. As soon as I heard that line, red flags went up. I can understand that it means miracle as a highly improbable or extraordinary event, such as evolution or how life began, but that other part of my mind pictures a smug theist raising their chin as they so triumphantly declare that facts and evidence will indeed lead to the knowledge of miracles as divine intervention. When you’re trying to send an important message like this, you should try to be more clear about things like that…

  • Anonymous

    I was thinking just the same thing.  Going forward I hope that we’ll see closer to a 50/50 split in the great thinkers that our and future generations will produce.

  • Anonymous

    Yawn.  Still ranting about Stalin, Grady?

  • Anonymous

    Awesome video.