Surviving Progress

Film about the risks we pose to our own survival in the name of progress; connecting financial collapse, growing inequality and global oligarchy with the sustainability of mankind.

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  1. So reduce the population of Earth to 1/3rd of today. Get rid of modern life. Cancel all debt to the benefit of borrowers.
    Of course those at the top won’t be affected.
    This doc is great for that social justice class you have to take as a freshman.

  2. That’s really interesting!

  3. It’s ironic how the National Film Board of Canada is in co-production with this documentary which advocates lower consumption by everyone and the removal of the mindless economic system (this I totally agree on) and they then only SELL it so we can’t watch it for free, therefore a much limited audience gets to see this masterpiece. FUCK COPYRIGHT LAWS! Does anyone else agree?

  4. I think they are right, we consume way way more than we need, and the humanity is doomed if we continue this way and do not educate our children to take care of our planet.Even if we will reach out to other planets, there is still no need to leave ours.
    But if we deplete and overpopulate mother Earth, we will have to.I liked the analogy with the bank account, that untill the 80s we lived off the interest, and from the 90s we started to eat the deposit that produces the interest at an alarming rate.I think that the modernisation of society means not growth but acomplishing the means to make just enough for everybody to live a decent life

  5. Remarkable documentary, fantastic cinematography, thought-provoking, left me pondering many things. Please, whatever you do, watch this! 

  6. Any how I thought that doc was very well done, not at all subversive, It’s always a good sign when the majority of your interviewees have earned thier PHD’s. Yeah we are going to hell in a hand basket and the only true solution is the unthinkable one. Mandatory euthinasia. Not mass killings but mass regulation of birthrights, and also, a total socialist, raw material based economic system. I’m sorry people but to beat the terrorists we are gonna have to lose some freedoms.

    • Come on bud… It’s good that you’re taking time out of your day to educate yourself about the crisis’s our society faces but I’m afraid you’ll need to continue digging if you’re still convinced that it’s the big bad terrorists who are trying to kill us because of our freedoms or whatever other bullshiite it is they try to convince us of. There is no one “true solution” to multiple problems my friend and death the sacrifice of freedom certainly aren’t the solution to any of them. The truth of the matter is that we have more than enough space and resources to take care of everyone on this planet if the focus was taking care of everyone on this planet but it isn’t, it’s taking care of the people who run this planet. And these are the same people trying to convince you that it’s some motion picture villain with a cloth on his head and a hate for freedom in his heart that wants to destroy and dominate our lives. You can’t “lose” freedom or freedoms because freedom is a state of mind. The concept of giving up freedom is only in place so you agree to do so and therefore put yourself in an imprisoned state of mind which is controllable. The fact that you’re studying anything shows that you’re on the right track my friend and if your comment was one of sarcasm then even better, just always keep digging deeper and you’ll know when you’ve found your truth, it’ll look a lot different than theirs.

  7. Wow people step out of the 1950’s and study up on Karl Marx and socialism as a whole. Stop believing that “Muslim” is a scary word just because W.Bush tells you it is. Come out from underneath your desks, the commies aren’t going to strike just yet and read up on true world history. Heck grab a copy of the Kohran while your at it and see how “eerily” similar it is to Christianity, and that other heathen religion… Judaiism

  8. conservation of natural resources, population control and technology can be a sustainable solution. just leave rich people out of it and pay your bills! more for them  less for you, see how simple it is. Conserve, stop breeding and for gods sake keep getting loans and spend that money. your computer is so yesterday. Time to get a new one. who said crime doesn’t pay. ha.

  9. It is more and more clear for me to tell what is good and what is bad. Everyone should be able at least to make the same difference.

    I am 26 years old fench canadian, and i agree with this film, why should’t I???

    +1 in thumbs up! 
    Put your thumb down to cancel mine if you don’t agree.
    but, I’ll keep doing good! I hope…

    Great doc!

    -M.B.F-

  10. Superb! Insightful, thought-provoking and with great cinematography to match… watch this!

  11. @Mr Guy
    Complexity must be quit a grip for you to handle if you feel the need to use “derp what derp” as some sort of description? Mr. Webster is calling, he’s got a vast collection to help you out.

  12. @Mads
    Perhaps it’s the truth and your lack of understanding that has left you feeling confused.
    Continuing grazing with the rest of the cattle, thanks.

    • @3e4ccd4b46d060c3fe0b0489ece009f0:disqus Hahaha, thank you for the flattering assumption about my intelligence.But I am quit sure that is not the case sir. It is not that I didn’t agree with the material or couldn’t understand it, I merely felt the need to question the lack of historical information about the theories presented in the film.I do not personally disagree with Marx’s theories, on revolution and the fall of capitalism (which is referred to numerous times in this documentary), but I do ponder the fact that they chose never to mention his name. It’s like watching a documentary about electricity that never mentions Nikola Tesla, but just gives Thomas Edison credit for everthing.

  13. I lost interest with the confused people because the introduction was a move towards complexity followed by people going derp what derp.

    The introduction should be more explanatory, and as moving as the scenes with the chimps.

    Instead it feels like a firecracker with out explosive.

  14. Marxism? Did we just watch the same movie? Why is it that everything that doesn’t paint unbridled consumerism, greed and capitalism as a good thing automatically associated with Marx and that scary “C” word. Grow up.

    • Why do you think communism or Marx is scary things? I don’t.. Just words. 
      I am not sure what you think I was trying to say in my previous post.

      But the documentary does on numerous occasions talk about the demise of capitalism, and it presents it in a way, that in my mind sounds very much like Marxism. That the ‘poor’ will overthrow the ‘rich’. I am personally not an advocate for violent revolution, or violence in general, but I do subscribe to Marx’s logic – that if a people is worked to hard, they will rebel. I do however not think it is inevitable, as Marx himself did. 

  15. Everyone who is about to spend the next one and a half hour of time being bored and doing nothing; watch this instead.

  16. Kind of strange documentary, most of it is about marxism, revolution, the top losing legitimacy because of economic failure and the bottom will overthrow them, if the top doesn’t manage to kill us all before that. But why no mention of marx?
    Either way, I guess most of this stuff is correct. We are living on a finite planet. But there is something about this documentary I don’t like.. dunno what.