Attack on Titan Shows Us....
…that the scope and difficulty of humanity’s direst problems are proportional to the number of people who refuse to help solve them.
For every person who donates to charity in a far away land, but allows kids to be homeless in their own town are part of the problem. They are eager to “rescue” others, but not if it would change the cozy position from which they extend their hand.
The few who earnestly work everyday to save our world …their task grows with every person who decides not to do anything. The same goes for the Survey Corps, whose task would be vastly easier if not for the millions of humans who won’t leave the safety of the walls.
There are humans on Earth, all over the place, who prefer the safety of walls. They prefer the quiet dreaming of a “good life” at the expense of our Survey Corps, the people who own their responsibility to our world and fail and die daily in it’s service.
Consumerist ideology becomes much more frightening when we recognize that the lame titans, those who eat mindlessly, are the greatest threat to humankind. The 4 meter, 7 meter, 15 meter classes are analagous to our classism — even the lowliest titans wreak havoc on the lives of those in their vicinity. They trample everything underfoot in pursuit of more food, more goods, more, more, more … their appetites insatiable. So too is the consumerist, buying and spending to their hearts content without a care for how that impacts others or impacts our world.
I watched an episode with someone who remarked that they would be upset if they were to die at the hands of the “retarded” titans. They would prefer to be eaten by the intelligent ones. So it goes with the average person who believe that being devoured by rich people in America is superior to other oppression in countries deemed inferior; who can’t be bothered even with self-awareness, let alone a mindfulness of those around them. Yet this is the state of our global village. That person didn’t see themselves in the “retarded” titan.
And yet even for those who propose to do the “right” thing, thinking themselves among the intelligent titans when they propose wiping out humanity and living as their empresses and emperors, as their lords …they also don’t see themselves in the very persons they loathe.
Attack on Titan shows us that the scope and difficulty of the world’s problems is proportional to the number of people who refuse to help in their resolution. The fewer people that help with mankind’s direst issues (poverty, famine, health epidemics, job literacy, etc), the greater the burden becomes on those who do, and the smaller the chances we will prevail over extinction.