What A Wonderful World

For a good part of today, I was humming this song. What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. It was playing during the end credits of the film Twelve Monkeys. This film is about a convict from the future who travels back in time to 1996 to stop the release of a deadly virus that is destined to wipe out 5 billion people on earth. Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt all put in excellent performances for it. I shall write a review on this for FF as soon as I can.

It's odd and also ironic that director Terry Gilliam chose this song for the film, since the world in his movie is anything but wonderful. It often looks bleak, apocalyptic and pretty much on the brink of self-destruction. Perhaps the song was meant as the perfect antithesis for his story.

And in a way, the song may hold a lot more meaning in our world today. The world is anything but a sane or safe place to live. Chaos and discord are everywhere. We have hostage situations, terrorism, separatist violence, earthquakes, war and a murder of a cricket coach. The earth is not a nice place to live anymore. But I guess it's been that way for a long time. In my opinion, the main reason for all this happening is mankind's own selfishness. We care too much for ourselves, and we hate others for fear of them taking away what's ours. The thought of sharing scares some people to a point where they have to do what they think is necessary to survive. And this usually involves violence or injustice of some kind, and quite often the wrong people suffer for it. The world has become too small for us to live in together, and now a lot of people want to kill each other so that they can go on existing.

But perhaps someday mankind can evolve and be better than they are now. Someday perhaps they will live for the pursuit of knowledge, instead of wealth. And by then, the need for war and destruction will finally come to an end. Yeah, I know this all sounds like Star Trek. I am a dreamer after all. But it might come to pass, we just won't be around to see it when it does. And then finally, what a wonderful world it would be.

(There's a new addition to this blog, I'd like to thank Ira for helping me make my choice.)