The Gods Must Be Crazy, a film directed by South African born Jamie Uys is an allegorical journey of how drastically unnatural our technology has become. The film in its essence is a story about discovery and how the world has steered from its natural origin.
The story starts with the introduction of the natives, the Bushmen or Sans people of the Kalahari. These natives survive in the Kalahari as hunter-gatherers. The Bushmen also survive picking wild berries and other methods of gathering water and such. One day, the pilot of a passing plane decides that after drinking a thirst quenching ‘Coke’ it’s better to throw it out the window than recycling it. This empty bottle of ‘Coke’ becomes the trigger reaction to one mans epic journey of curiosity and discovery.
Like who have seen this particular film, the story is self-explanatory. It draws a comparison between technically advanced civilizations and the non-technically advanced civilizations. At first thought one would immediately think that a civilization that has not been introduced to technology would be backwards. But is that truly the case? For example, giving a person of lesser intelligence a wrist watch that can calculate the most complex math within seconds, tell you your exact location in the world and even tell you the perceptual calibrations of the sun does not necessarily make this person smarter or by any means more advanced than the next. In fact, the chance that this technology is actually used for its intended purpose is slim. Imagine a baby being sat down with no one around to explain to them what a ‘jack-in-the-box’ is supposed to do. This baby would sit down and investigate the box, pound on it, shake it and throw it. As the baby builds his/her understanding of what this mysterious box is without prior explanation, something wonderful happens….
They form their own reality of what the use and purpose of this box actually is. What if they eventually discover the handle and begin to turn it? A few seconds of careful turning would reveal this painted figure popping out of the box at the baby.
What then?
The baby, following his/her natural inclination will make a self-determining judgment as to what this thing truly is. It will decide whether it is evil, good or neutral. This process is by far more interesting. I mean, lets think about it. From the moment that the human being is launched into this layer of reality, he/she is told what things are and what these things do. It is in fact a matter of suggestive perceptions that construct most human’s lives. These suggestions, being simply suggestions are taken as fact without question. Others give us the unwanted gift of their limitations. We simply take them as truth and never question them.
Everything is multi-dimensional.
Now, technology necessarily does not make situations better. In many ways, technology takes what already has a natural structure and dismantles it hoping that in the reconstruction of such a structure it can make it better.
Hope is nice and essential, but if a society or thought is not broken why would it need to be fixed? This ironically is the main problem with technology and forced advancement (evolution for the sake of evolution).
The bottle (technology) when introduced to the Sans people is welcomed at first. However, eventually this technology brings the Sans people a particular sense of disruption in the form of jealousy and anger. The bottle is then viewed as a great evil and is taken from the village to be destroyed.
Much like the baby analyzing the jack-in-the-box, the Sans people, void of any suggestive measure interpreted the bottle as something they did not need nor want.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could simply make decisions on our own natural inclination versus the forced inclination of others?
Your example of the baby and the “Jack in a box” relates to Xi’s situation in the movie. No one was available to tell him the name of the strange object and explain to him the intended use of it. The baby’s curiosity made him approach the box. Xi’s curiosity made him pick up the bottle, and wonder about it. While reading your essay and thinking back at this particular moment in the movie, I realized that humans possess that innate drive to seek knowledge, which is characterized by curiosity. He could have walked away from this strange and unknown object, but he decided to pick it up, to analyze it, and wonder about its nature. Since they did not know the intended use of the bottle, they have used their creative intelligence to find different use for it. I am sure that if they had that information, they would probably not have found so many uses for it. I think this rejoin your idea of suggestive perceptions. One other interesting thing is how they came to associate the bottle with evil and wanted to get rid of it. I believe the same thing could have happened with the baby and the box. If the popped figure scares him, he will stay away from it. If it amuses him, he will want to play with it. And once he learns the concept of good and evil, he would definitely categorize this object based on his experience.
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