Movie: They Shall Not Grow Old" is the opposite of a Deep Fake.

While few people understand or even know about the profound threat of Deep Fakes obliterating what little trust we may still have in the media, public officials, and the government we depend on.  

But, the same technology that fuels realistic images to fool us can also enable us to see the profound deep realities of World War I, and the human flaws we continue to ignore.

Professor Steven Badsey’s op-ed movie review (Washington Post, Jan 19, 2019) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/peter-jacksons-new-documentary-isnt-perfect-but-its-implications-are-immense/2019/01/18/e9956baa-19cf-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html?utm_term=.0430198d30ef   inspired me to immediately purchase reserved tickets for its Martin Luther King Day premier.

I only wish the columnist’s summary critique had offered some critical ‘big picture’ human elements that the first world war continues to offer, like the maxim that ‘the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history’. 

   

First, humans persistently allow creative mental concepts around our mostly artificial national, political, ethnic, economic, and religious differences -- to divide us.  These unnatural divisions make deadly conflict on a grand scale is inevitable.  

Second, humanity has persistently rejected a rational alternative to war - the rule of law.  Given our mental addiction to our flawed mental concepts the unpredictably of human over-reactions to any small event– is entirely predictable.  And given the increasing killing capacity of persistent advances weapons technology the end of war is predictable.  There will be no winners, and nothing left to fight for.    

Without the alternative of enforceable world law founded on the supremacy of human rights instead of the lethal protection of flawed human concepts (nationalism, market forces, extremist religious ideologies) each war will only continue to lay the path for the next, and Armageddon becomes inevitable.

There was profound reason in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence referring to the “self-evident” “Truths” that are inherent in the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”.  

It’s tragically and inevitably catastrophic that "we the people" have never demanded that our Constitution fully codified this profound wisdom for every domestic, foreign, and defense policy enacted.  

I hope as a professor in Conflict Studies, in the UK, Mr. Badsey would also study effective conflict resolution and more important…the fundamental elements of conflict prevention globally.