“I Am,” Not

The documentary film “I Am,” by Tom Shadyac was entertaining and interesting but ultimately biased in cherry-picking science and philosophy to fit its narrow definition of human nature and the social order.

We all need to learn to cooperate, and we are all connected to one another organically, as the film pointed out, we are even interconnected through some sort of as yet unknown radial energy, but cooperation is only one part of human nature.

Human nature is altruistic and cooperative mainly toward kin and local community, and there is nothing wrong with that. Human nature is also fundamentally territorial, even ethnocentric, and these parts of human nature don't go away even if we try to throw them under the bus of egalitarianism.

Certainly we need to emphasize cooperation on earth, and yes, we are all the same in basic human nature, but we are also different, with great variety, and this needs to be included in our social and political philosophy.

The experts interviewed by Shadyac for the film were all of the growth and power of the central state variety, who continue to try to legislate one-size-fits-all politics and cultre, which so far has only managed to virtually destroy local communities, churches and schools, where true cooperation really works.