Sometimes, the right film comes to you when you least expect it. That happened a couple of Sundays ago when I took my partner to the Social Change Film Festival at the beautifully preserved Scala Theatre to see two documentaries: Money & Life and No Impact Man (which will be the subject of a later post).
Money & Life is a US documentary that documents the historic significance of money as a currency, and how it has grown exponentially since the Industrial Revolution to now dominate our way of life. Where once spirituality, community and physical resources would evenly shape people's everyday lives, money now dominates our world.
The documentary specifically outlines how debt, interest and speculative financial trading have created a market that is completely disconnected from tangible goods and services, and how the pursuit of wealth in this context means that people are striving for achievements disconnected from the physical resources of our world and the services that develop relationships within our communities. This renders people blind to other important facets of our world, for example, the connectedness of relationships within our communities, or the unsustainable depletion of resources in a finite world.
The answer, according to Money & Life, is to re-imagine the idea of currency. Money as we know it can stay where it is, but why not create another form of trade-able currency that values good will, community projects, and other endeavours to which the present money assigns little worth? Will this inspire people to look away from the wealth of intangible capitalism and focus more on the value of real products and services?
Of course, this is not a new idea, but the power of cinema provides an entertaining, empathetic medium to express this idea. It is invigorating and the perfect antidote to my feelings of worthlessness and failure that I was feeling on the weekend.
There have been some tough times in the last 2 months in my new life in Bangkok. No longer practicing law, finding myself reliant on my partner for income, learning to be a homemaker (which I am terrible at), and not knowing or understanding the social institutions in Thailand - yes, you could say that my identity was going through some challenges.
The night before, my partner and I had a semi-drunk, semi-frank discussion that exposed my woefully inadequate social networking skills, which was an important part in finding work now that I was forging my path in new directions in the NGO world. So to say that I was bummed out was an understatement. While I have days and moments of pure joy being with my partner and exploring Bangkok, underneath my sense of identity and self-worth was slowly being chipped away at each failed networking event, each failed interview, each frustrated attempt to find and buy that useless thing for our new house.
And central to that was the loss of my identity as a practising lawyer. Something I had worked for since high school, where I had studied Australian law, and practised in Australian government law, something that earned me enough money to live comfortably and buy what I wanted and needed. Something that I could come home from at the end of the day, and talk to my partner about my wins and losses.
All that seemed lost in Bangkok, and I was trying but failing to replace it, and my inability to transition to a new industry only worsened my feelings of worthlessness.
But I realised I was also failing to give worth to some of my other achievements, like taking the plunge to move to a new country, like strengthening my commitment to my partner, like sacrificing my safe old job in search of something new. What I had before had value, and hopefully what I end up with will have value. But also of value are my attempts to get there, successful or not. And while I knew that intellectually, it took the experience of cinema for me to forget my troubles for 90 minutes and to feel that emotionally. So thanks cinema, you did it again.
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