I wish Paul had taken a different position with reviewing the movie—I would not call it a film—in his podcast or not review it at all. Of course, there are talking points, but Thrive is fundamentally flawed in its—for some, hypnotically—promoting a wide variety of conspiracy theories based on an illusory division between well-meaning but victimized majority of "us" and evil, greedy, powerful minority of 'them' while distracting and absolving from the troubling truth that the real source of the problem is in all of US. If we truly root for permaculture we need sanity, humility and diligence to change little by little the tiny worlds around us and make an effort to live sustainably while providing example and guidance for each other. Thrive is visual and ideological kitsch with unicorns and rainbows on our side and black-suited, menacing thugs in ski-masks on "theirs"; appealing to open minds is the means of snake-oil peddlers and threateningly demanding for it is that of paranoids. Sure, give me a free energy generator, and I, with the rest of the free market, will embrace it—I think that it is hogwash along with the aliens. I would be much more in the company of the toned down but deep humanity of Stephen Hawking of TED than that of the directionless grand utopian vision—and global warming denial—of Foster (Procter &) Gamble of Thrive. I am sure that Mr. Gamble in his open-collar custom shirts considers the total vacuum of critical response to his movie and "movement" as the orchestrated suppression of his mission by the media controlled by "thugs" with white ties and pocket squares on the top of the corporate pyramids and not because they are patently infantile, not worthy of other consideration but for a post in the aptly named forum.
