Can bad news become a self-fulfilling prophecy? That’s exactly what motion graphics trio Bastian Boehm, Felipe Lima and Tom Duscher explore in their graduation film, Bad News – A Media Fiction. Through the metaphor of a 1950′s newspaper that self-destructs as it reports on an apocalyptic comet, the film offers timely cultural commentary on the potential sociocultural consequences of today’s media negativism and sensationalism. Is Rupert Murdoch the Dorian Grey of our worldview?
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Primates, philosophers, and how subjectivity ensures the absolute truth of our existence.
What does it mean to be human? Centuries worth of scientific thought, artistic tradition and spiritual practice have attempted to answer this most fundamental question about our existence. And yet the diversity of views and opinions is so grand it has made that answer remarkably elusive. While we don’t necessarily believe such an “answer” — singular and conclusive by definition — even exists, today we make an effort to understand the wholeness of a human being without compartmentalizing humanity into siloed views of the brain, emotion, morality and so forth. So we look at this complex issue from three separate angles — evolutionary biology, philosophy and neuroscience — hoping weave together a somewhat more holistic understanding of the whole.
THE LEAKEY FOUNDATION ON HUMANNESS
From The Leakey Foundation, which aims to increase scientific knowledge and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival, comes What Makes Us Human? — a multifaceted exploration of who we are as a species and how we came to be that way. Barely 8 minutes long, the film features an astounding all-star cast of scientists — Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Wrangham, Steven Pinker, Eugenie Scott and more — and tackles a number of complex concepts related to consciousness and the essence of being human.
There is a lot more biology to our behavior than we used to think.” ~ Richard Wrangham
Though the film is essentially an ad for The Leakey Foundation, that’s more than okay given that over the past half-century, the foundation has stepped up to the government’s consistent failure to properly fund scientific research and practically launched the careers of some of the greatest scientists of our time — Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, Don Johanson, Richard Wrangham, Daniel Lieberman, and even Jane Goodall herself.
Dan Dennett is one of today’s most prominent and prolific philosophers. In this excellent 2003 TED talk, he exposes the flawed and often downright misleading way in which we (mis)understand our consciousness, perpetuated by the many tricks our brains play on us.
It’s very hard to change people’s minds about something like consciousness, and I finally figured out the reason for that. The reason for that is that everybody’s an expert on consciousness.” ~ Dan Dennett
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is among the world’s leading researchers on the neurobiology of mind and behavior, focusing more specifically on emotion, memory, decision-making, communication and creativity. In this compelling BigThink interview, Damasio gives a basic definition of “consciousness”
Consciousness is the special quality of mind, the special features that exist in your mind, that permit us to know, for example, that we ourselves exist and that things exist around us. And that is something more than just your mind. Mind allows us to portray in different sensory modalities — visual, auditory, olfactory, you name it — what we are like and what the world is like, but this very, very important quality of subjectivity is the quality that allows us to take a distant view and say, ‘I am.’” ~ Antonio Damasio
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Now, an ambitious feature documentary is on a quest to probe deeper and go further to find what it is that truly makes people happy. HAPPY, from Oscar-nominated director Roko Belic (Genghis Blues), treks the globe from the swamps of Louisiana to the slums of Kolkata to unearth the sources of the world’s most precious natural resource through ordinary and extraordinary human stories and powerful interviews with the leading neuroscientists and psychologists researching the science of happiness.
HAPPY seeks to share the wisdom of traditional cultures and the cutting edge science that is now, for the first time, exploring human happiness.”
Inspired by Belic’s insight that the United States is among the world’s wealthiest nations yet reports some of the lowest happiness levels, HAPPY aims to examine this disconnect between wealth and well-being, indentifying the true currency of happiness.
I went to Africa when I was 18 and I had a very shocking experience. I met literally hundreds of people over the course of a few weeks who owned absolutely nothing. And yet they genuinely were exuding happiness.” ~ Roko Belic
WGSO has an excellent interview with Belic, revealing much of the inspiration for and insights from the film:
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Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
What does it mean to be human? Centuries worth of scientific thought, artistic tradition and spiritual practice have attempted to answer this most fundamental question about our existence. And yet the diversity of views and opinions is so grand it has made that answer remarkably elusive. While we don’t necessarily believe such an “answer” — singular and conclusive by definition — even exists, today we make an effort to understand the wholeness of a human being without compartmentalizing humanity into siloed views of the brain, emotion, morality and so forth. So we look at this complex issue from three separate angles — evolutionary biology, philosophy and neuroscience — hoping weave together a somewhat more holistic understanding of the whole.
THE LEAKEY FOUNDATION ON HUMANNESS
DAN DENNETT ON CONSCIOUSNESS
ANTONIO DAMASIO ON CONSCIOUSNESS
Now, an ambitious feature documentary is on a quest to probe deeper and go further to find what it is that truly makes people happy. 
