Reflective Blog on Movie, End of Suburbia.

Last week Friday, we watched a movie called "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream" during Global Ethics. After I watched this movie, I really had no ideas of what the movie was talking about, but I kind of got the ideas of the suburbanization and oil crisis. As global warming is going worse, people start finding some ridiculous solutions, such as moving to the countryside, places without polluted air, and buying hydrogen cars, vehicles without oil, etc.

I am shock by these facts, because my parents just bought a house in Jhudong, Hsinchu's countryside three years ago. My parents are always complaining about spending too much money on gasoline, because it is far to go everywhere from our house. Whenever we are out of town, we always have to go to RT- Mart, and buy a lot of food and daily necessaries. It is beautiful here, but it also brings a lot of inconveniences. We also have a Nissan SUV, so it needs more gasoline than that of small cars.

What is happening in the US is actually exactly what is happening in Taiwan. Taiwan's first car corporation started in 1988, called the Formosa Automobile Corporation. During that time, the price of gasoline was really cheap, so everyone wants to fill the gasoline fully. But, during the world gasoline crisis, this car company has closed. And now, the price of gasoline has declined again. People who have cars might just add more and more gasoline during this time, because they never realized there is one-day gasoline is going to run out.

Taiwan is also doing these "Suburbanism" advertising. There are more and more people who want to live on the countryside, but changing the way we live cannot change the fact that natural resources are running out. I also think this is not a sustainable life, because one day if we ran out of gasoline, there is probably not many ways to travel.

What Do Organic Food & Financial-Collapsed Company Have In Common?

Our senior students read an excerpt called Big Organic, from chapter nine of the book, The Omnivore's Dilemma written by Michael Pollan. Our task is to make connections with a movie we watched last week, Enron- The smartest Guys in the Room. As I first read this excerpt, I really do not know how simple organic food have relationships with a financial-collapsed company. I realized what our Global Ethics class exhibition currently is- Corporation.

I started thinking that everything we study must have to do with money. The reason why it is really hard to maintain a sustainable business is because it does not earn much money, and it is too small. Originally, organic food companies were good; they started off small, worked with only small farm, but when corporation involved, they produced as much as they can, and do whatever they can do to get the economic benefits. They now have the same as the purpose of Enron. For example, Earthbound Farm started off really small with small washing lettuce in the living room, but it industrialized in the end, and became the business type like Enron.

When we talk about business, we need marketing people. Organic products and Enron all have really persuasive marketing group. Corporations need marketing people in order to package their figure, control the media, exaggerate their good, and twist consumers' minds. For example, organic company's marketing people will tell loads of benefits of buying organic food, and by doing that, the company earns so much more money than those of regular company. They tell a good story, same as Enron telling people that their company is going to be fine and earn money.

As I think of corporation and money, I think of greed. These companies all have lots of people who are behind scenes, and helping to make more and more money. As this phenomenon happening, organic food is going to be the next economic impact!