Things to Come (1936)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028358/


This rather old movie may be regarding as a tutorial for recognizing predictive programming elements for the simple reason that a lot of its 'predictions' have more or less come true. Precisely because of the oldness of the movie the cinematographic skills are necessarily primitive and the programming thus is rather crude and obvious. Hence the movie makes for a suitable, if not ideal, case study for trying to detect elements of predictive programming.

For a decent synopsis read the dedicated Wikipedia page.

The movie is an adaptation to the silver-screen of the dystopian HG Wells novels written in 1931 and 1933:

Quote
The screenplay was written by H. G. Wells and is a loose adaptation of his own 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and his 1931 non-fiction work, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind.

So what predictive programming elements can we glean from this movie? Let's go over them by my now usual routine of addressing various relevant movie-shots and accompanying quotes.

1. 
   The movie predicts a war involving a city called 'Everytown' (which is just a peculiar way of stating that the war is also a global war) by Christmas 1940, whereas the actual World War broke out in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland. So Wells was only off for about a sloppy one year period. It goes to show that Wells was definitely 'in the know', as Alan Watt calls it, as to what the agenda entailed. The viewer of that time, is urged to prepare for the coming war.Interesting quote at the beginning of the movie:
   "War stimulates progress. War can be a stimulating thing. But you can overdo a stimulant. [...] If we don't end war, war will end us.... What can we do?"
   The sentiment regarding the phenomenon of war pretty soon slides from a fairly tolerant one to a more alarming realization that war does have the capacity to basically wipe humanity off of the face of the earth.
   
   Hence from the get go the viewer is encouraged to start thinking of alternatives to war (as a way to settle disputes between states and powers).


2. 
   
   The viewer not only is prepared for a state of war but is also made aware of the likelihood that the coming war will not be a clean 'gentlemanly' one, involving only standing armies fighting it out on some remotely located rural country-side far out of sight of city life. Quite contrarily, this time the war will be an all out dirty one in which civilian non-combatants too will be drawn into the conflict. In the movie this is shown by scenes in which in Everytown the civil population mixes with the armed forces.


3. 
   "Why do we have to murder each other?"
   That's indeed the right type of question to ask. Why do we kill each other to begin with? Why do we engage in war at all? The viewer is made aware of the rightful banality of the need for one country to go and fight another. The viewer is again stimulated to consider more benign alternatives to war as a means to settle disputes or to look towards the possibility of forever ridding the earth of war altogether.


4. 
   "You have been trained not to think but to do." Quite a true statement in its own right. Soldiers are expected to obey orders first and ask questions, if allowed, later. Since it is the sovereign ruler stating this and since the movie casts him in a bad light anyway, the viewer gets an even less positive opinion about war; in which its participants are basically caricature-like robots who are stripped of thinking and expected to only follow orders. Surely, an enlightened society looks towards thinking as something that is an asset rather than being redundant or even a handicap.


5. 
   After more than 25 years of a long and protracted war the results are as obvious as they are devastating. Everytown has been ruined and so the populations of the world have been all but decimated. The viewer is thus at once reminded of the potential horror that goes with the consequences of a protracted war. Surely this is an unbearable glance into the future for the impressionable viewer of that time. But the troubled viewer needs not to worry, as is customary to stories with happy endings, salvation is already peeking around the corner.


6. 
   "We as mechanics and engineers have placed ourselves to salvage the world. []... The brotherhood of efficiency, the freemasonry of science. We're the last trustees of civilization when everything else has failed."
   How more plain to you want it? Humanity obviously cannot take care of itself. Either we're too infantile and/or we're too busy warring with each other to even sit down calmly and try and settle disputes peacefully and reasonably. So on come the intellectual (scientific) elite who have taken it upon themselves to salvage the world and rid it of war in its entirety. It's a blatantly obvious advertisement for a Scientific Dictatorship, mind you on a global scale, if there ever was one.


7. 
   "We don't approve of independent sovereign states. We mean to stop them."
   The people are too warlike to be able to take care of their own businesses and problems. Never mind the banks who fund wars, the manufacturers who produce weapons of war and the religious parties who spark wars, as they have always done before. No of course, it's all the fault of poor old Joe Sixpack and Jane Soap-opera. Hence, in order to 'protect' ourrselves from our bloodcurdling neighbor, we all need to surrender our basic human rights. Of course, we are all too familiar with that mantra for god knows how many years already, most assuredly since the terror attack of 911.Thus the viewer is helped to warm to the idea of a relinquishment of state sovereignty ultimately for his/her own good as it 'obviously' did not do anybody much good when it was still in effect.
   
   That body of surviving 'engineers and mechanics' taking control of the world for the purpose of implementing a unilateral pacification program obviously reflects the mission statement of an organization we now know as the United Nations. However that organization did not exactly achieve its aims:
   

   Quote

   The founders of the UN had high hopes that it would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have obviously not fully come to pass. From about 1947 until 1991 the division of the world into hostile camps during the Cold War made agreement on peacekeeping matters extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War, renewed calls arose for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace and co-operation, as several dozen active military conflicts continued to rage across the globe. The breakup of the Soviet Union has also left the United States in a unique position of global dominance, creating a variety of new problems for the UN (See the United States and the United Nations).

   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_Nations
   Never mind that the United Nations failed miserably, that's not the point of having it. What is important however, is that the installation of the UN may be interpreted as a first approximation to a global scientific dictatorship.
   
   
   "We shall come here and clean things up. We go on, that's how things are. We're taking hold of things. With science and government in the long run no-man is indispensable. The human things go on with peace forever. The warlike state has to vanish. "
   I agree with the peace part. War has to end. But is it really necessary to hand over sovereignty only to trade it for an essentially undemocratic and totalitarian rule in which people have the same rights as cattle?
   
   Be that as it may, given the sentiment of the movie and the horrific consequences of years and years of ongoing war, the viewer is tempted to agree with the protagonist for favoring a scientific dictatorship.
   
   To play things in favor of the protagonist, the last remaining sovereign ruler appears to have a love for the bottle, is rude, loud and is called to have the subtlety of a bullfrog by what seems to be his very own wife no less, and of course he is openly inimical to science. Therefore he is not your ideal poster boy for state sovereignty, the viewer is led to think. Hence the only offered alternative in the movie becomes attractive by means of exclusion. An obvious but no less effective technique, if you ask me.


8. 
   At the end of the movie the viewer is familiarized with the marvels and prosperity that belong to a serene and complete scientific dictatorship. Cities have gone underground and seemingly have become entirely self-sufficient. There are no traces of all out destruction. Society is orderly. People are sharp-dressed and look healthy and content. Conflicts and/or disputes are nowhere to be found and pretty looking technological gadgets abound. What a pleasant peek into the future.Who would want to possibly have something else than a scientific dictatorship now? Or so the viewer is urged to think.

Disclaimer:
Please do not think that I am a proponent of war. On the contrary I am disgusted by the horrible machinations of war as much as any other well-thinking human being would be. However, I do have reservations about being manipulated into a global dictatorship on false pretenses. Because you then automatically have to ask yoursel, well if a scientific dictatorship is so benign then why are they so secretive and manipulative about it?

Therefore, I am not against state sovereignty and I am highly skeptical of a global dictatorship, scientific or not. It's not that I am against a world government per se, as a concept. If its leadership is benevolent, reasonable and does not abuse its power I might even welcome it. What I am worried about though is abject and absolutist forms of government in which you have no rights to be able to defend yourself against possible abuses of power and you are basically being treated as rightless cattle.

In addition, let me state it quite clearly that I am not against science as a whole. In fact, I am a scientist by training myself and am thus fully acquainted with the scientific method. As such, I am also fully aware of the shortcomings of science and that the science of today will be generally antiquated by tomorrow, figuratively speaking. So hence a dictatorial rule based on today's science is likely to be unjust or unwarranted in due time. Hence extreme care and scepticism has to be taken to conform legislation based on the today's science.

Appendix:
The United Nations

Quote

Summary Map showing United Nations members and the decade they joined the UN as from the figures on the UN site. At the top right is an inset map showing Cold War countries - USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and West Germany. Also shown are North Yemen and South Yemen, and Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Note: On the site, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are given a 1945 date for joining, with the other former-Soviet republics given a 1990s date. China is given a 1945 date for joining, when they were represented by the Republic of China (which later relocated to Taiwan in 1949), and was replaced by the People's Republic of China as China's representative in 1971 (see China and the United Nations). All areas listed in gray are not UN members

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:United_N...countries_world_map.PNG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_member_states

Quote
The U.N. Deception This is the New World Order, the globalists will overthrow the United States Consitition to replace it with a UN Constitution! A one world government, being setup by globalist elites; George Bush Senior, Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Pope Benedict, all of these elites and many others call for a one world governance! [googlevideo=http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=2634703139474212867&hl=nl]
References: Freedom From War THE HARD ROAD TO WORLD ORDER AGENDA 21 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)