I listen to
This I Believe. The radio show was started by journalist Edward R. Murrow in the 1950's to get people talking about what they believe in and to fight the funk of the McCarthyism era. World leaders, businessmen, and anyone really could submit essays about what they believe. A single succinct belief to tell the world. This I Believe was brought back in the early 2000's. Some of the essays are hilarious, some are touching, some are incredibly inspiring, and some I totally disagree with. I'm working on graduate school applications and need some writing samples. This I Believe was something I wanted to participate in, so why not write an essay and use that as a writing sample? Here is my This I Believe Essay, "Disaster Movies Make Me Cry (And I'm A Dude)."
I always cry in disaster movies. Whether it’s the Empire State Building exploding under an alien death ray, a massive tsunami overtaking the couple clutching each other on the beach, or the shut down of the Ocean Conveyor Belt plunging the world into a new Ice Age, I will cry at some point. Tears cascading down my cheeks. It took me a while to figure out why I seemed to always be deeply affected by disaster movies because I don’t see myself as an overly emotional or weepy person, but there was, and is, something about these movies that affects me like no other film genre. I came to realize that it’s the wholesale loss of humanity’s creative output. The depictions of the loss of life are not as gruesome as the loss of creativity. The destruction of the New York Public Library isn’t just the loss of one building, but the loss of all libraries and the information and work that went into every book and resource ever contrived. If we are, as Isaac Newton said, “standing on the shoulders of giants,” then the destruction of the great cities of the world isn’t just removing us, modern man, from the scene, but also the giants on which we stand. So much of human creativity wiped out in a moment of computer-generated, popcorn-fueled destructive power.
Human creativity is the greatest force this planet has ever seen. Creativity takes no sides, it makes no value judgments as it has unleashed some of the most wonderful and the most dangerous things this planet has ever known. With our creations, humanity has poisoned the air and water, and killed unknown numbers of living things, including scores of our fellow human beings. Humanity also imagined and created works of unintelligible beauty like Van Gogh’s “Cypress Trees” and how the Internet allows people to connect over distances and in ways never previously thought possible. Humanity finds inspiration everywhere. It’s in the natural world around us, it’s in the things we have already created like music and literature, and we even find inspiration in each other.
Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani stated, “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stones…” or maybe it did, but either way, Stone Age peoples innovated their way into a better life. Modern man thinks of him/herself as vastly superior to our ancestors; the Stone Age peoples innovated themselves into the Bronze Age. We can surely innovate ourselves into the Post-Petroleum Age. I believe human creativity changes the world every day.
And at the end of every disaster film, I’m always left disappointed. I always want to see where the people left standing will go next. How will they rebuild towns and cities? How will they fix things? What will they do with the rare opportunity to rebuild human culture? What will they do with a chance to start over, not only personally, but as a human race? When the giants’ shoulders are no longer there, what do we build to replace them?
