The God’s Must be Crazy… and humans are nuts!
While I am not so much a fan of becoming an adult mainly because of the insane number of bills that I have to foot, there is one thing that I have truly come to love about growing up. The refreshing and rich perspective that I have on issues. I even watch the movies I enjoyed as a kid with a different perspective. I understand them better. I wonder how I managed to enjoy them while all the jokes were flying right over my head. I particularly love The God’s must be Crazy. I marvel at how Jamie Uys accurately juxtaposed, intentionally or not, two extreme worlds; and a world trapped in between the two. I now realize that the events and madness on one side of the world could completely be unknown to and inexistent in another. That what we might think is universal, sadly, or not, isn’t.
I first watched it in the early 2000s. Since then, I have watched it an unhealthy number of times. It truly is an epic movie! I love the nostalgia that comes with watching it. It reminds me of a long-gone innocent and simpler time. An innocent time before I read more books, watched more movies, traveled, listened to music… and more music, experienced heartbreaks, made money and lost money, mastered other languages. A time when no one expected me to know what a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is… A time when I did not know how many calories there are in cakes and why that information matters. Now, that I have become more exposed to so much more of the world, new perspectives have been formed. And whenever I watch those childhood movies, I watch them with this sophisticated perspective.
When I first watched part one of it, I did not realize the colossal differences between the two worlds; the civilized and the uncivilized. I only knew the movie to be entertaining. What more was I supposed to be after anyway. I laughed at the bits that I found embarrassing. I did not think much about Nǃxau and his community, or the teacher that wanted to go teach in the village, or the shy biologist, or Sam Boga. I did not notice the incredibly flashy colors that the school children donned [what a fashion enthusiast will refer to as color-blocking].
I cannot help but think about the insane differences between the two worlds. There is a man in the civilized world with access to education, sophisticated machines, modern infrastructure, and governance systems that help him live a structured life. Then there is another man deep in the Kalahari, a region untouched by not even an ounce of civilization. A region where, as the narrator says, there are no clocks or calendars. Evil is not a word that exists in this world. In another world, people have defined what evil is, and there are consequences of being evil. I particularly like the part where Nǃxau is thrown in prison as punishment. How do you punish someone oblivious to the fact that he is being punished?
The Kalahari and 600 miles to its South are two distinct ecosystems. The people, the language, the education, and the culture are poles apart. It is fascinating yet depressing. Fascinating because the people in these two worlds are oblivious of any other life outside their shells. It does not bother them that there is a different life because they are incognizant of it. They all have a life that they have been accustomed to. And interestingly, people in both worlds have adapted to their systems. However, I find it is sad, especially for Nǃxau and his community because I feel that they live the life that they did because they did not know any better. They were not exposed to the chaotic civilized world What would have happened if the Bushman community was exposed to the civilized world? Would they still want to return to the life that they had led for the better part of their lives?
Seemingly, there is no balance in nature. We all cannot experience the same madness. Think about it, on one side of the world a Coca-Cola bottle is capable of disrupting the equilibrium of society, while in another world society is being disrupted by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics. In a world where the Coca-Cola bottle brings chaos, the solution to that is to throw it away. In the technologically advanced world, it is to build superior technologies to your competitors’. I imagine that there are people in a world where no rules exist and human rights are unheard of, while in another world progress is being made to accord robots rights.
On one side of the world, an 8-year-old child is being taught coding while on another, a child of the same age is being taught how to use a gun heavier than him for protection against cattle rustlers. The perspective of life of these two children is without a doubt different. Imagine showing these two children the Boston Dynamics’ robot that can dance and do parkour. It will be easier to understand for the child learning coding. He will even appreciate the strides in technology that have made that possible. However, to the child that has been herding cattle instead of going to school; you might have to explain what a robot is, first. Even if he went to school, he wouldn’t learn about coding anyway.
On one side of the world, there is a child that takes an expensive breakfast and is dropped to school in a chopper every day, and in another world, there’s a child who wakes up, eats leftover dinner, and canoes to school. God forbid that it rains else the river floods and that child misses school that day. Whenever I watch Free Documentary’s The Most Dangerous Ways to School, I cannot help but think of how terribly their respective governments have failed them. I cannot help but think of how unfair the world is.
While in one world someone is trying to source sustainably farmed escargots because they like their hors d’oeuvre ethical, another is trying to melt them with salt because they are invading his house. They are completely unaware that such a hideous creature is an expensive delicacy. That people even farm those things.
While in one world someone is trying to come up with amazing recipes for oats, another is feeding them to cows. I remember a while back asking my grandma to get me oats. I knew chances were that she farmed them, or her neighbors did. In futility, I tried explaining what they were. Eventually, I showed her a photo of what I was talking about and she blatantly asked me what I wanted to do with cow feed in the city. [I want to insert that face streaming with tears emoji so bad.] She could not understand how that is possibly a delicacy that humans love. She still doesn’t. I even tried describing all the incredible oat recipes but she could not believe me. Every time we meet she will ask me about oats and I will try and end that conversation because I cannot stand her sarcasm. I don’t even like oats, by the way. I sneak them in smoothies and cookies just to trick my body into thinking that I am eating healthy.
Hm, while someone is scrapping a tuber for water, another is trying to drain a house full of it… While one side of the world is hosting expensive conferences and forming task forces to discuss climate change and global warming, there is another world that is not even aware of any climate changes. They are not even aware of the word climate itself. Their habitat might not be as pristine as it used to be, but the changes have not been felt to warrant a conversation about it.
This lack of universality made me realize that common sense is not as common as we would like to assume. There is so much happening that we cannot assume that we all think the same way. What you deem to be common sense might not apply to the next person. It is determined by our experiences and exposure, and these are not identical. Think about it, remember when Nǃxau innocently drugged one of the goats and the herdboy tried to stop him? Nǃxau’s common sense was to slaughter the goat and share it with the boy, while to the boy common sense was to respect other people’s property. It is baffling to imagine that we are humans living closely apart.
I would have loved to write a profound conclusion, but I would like to believe that you all know me by now. Au revoir!
