Up (Film Series) | Hacker News Reader

Up (Film Series)

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93 pointswalterbell24 comments

I have watched the whole series and it is an amazing experience to watch someone's whole life. Most people will never see lives of people of different class, here you can see orphans, working class, privileged.

You can see how society works and how rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor. If you're poor and work really, really hard then maybe you'll become middle-class if you're lucky. If you're rich it really doesn't matter what you do, you'll be fine.

The more interesting discussion would be with what to do about that. So far I haven't seen society was able to solve that (and should it?).

E.g. Communism tried to solve the problem, but failed miserably, not only not resolving the problem, but also became a good excuse for imperialistic land capture.

The closest to the fix came the countries top of the "Social Mobility Index", what we can learn from them?

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index...

If society shouldn't try to make everyone's life better, what's the point of society?

Make most of the people's life better.

Everyone is an impossible target.

Maybe make the life better for more than the alternatives

This seems to cozy up to Utilitarianism, which has it's own problems. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#Criticisms_and_...

I was trying to reply to the Everyone part in:

If society can't make everyone happy, what's the point.

Right. Depending on the take, your aligns with the utilitarian perspective as well. You don't need to make everyone happy, as long as it leads to the "greatest good" (rule utilitarianism) or the "highest average happiness" (average utilitarianism). My point is that this perspective is not devoid of philosophical problems.

There are many other ideals, it borders philosophy actually.

For example I can think of (obviously exaggerated) example: everyone lives absolutely happy as they are, but climate worsens so much than no one survives. In about 500 million years oceans will boil anyway. But fixing that will require many people to be unhappy.

PS: > what's the point of society?

Survival? Space expansion? Ubermensch / AI? Why, as you say, hedonism is the ultimate goal?

Who said anything about hedonism? How about just making sure everyone has what they need to live comfortably?

I'm probably using exaggerated word again, sorry, not native speaker.

I'm just questioning why "Live comfortably" is an axiom. It's a natural human desire, yes, just as other animals, but I'm not so sure we should maximize that as a society. Many exciting and proud things I did in my life were outside my comfort zone.

E.g. a lot of drug addicts can vouch that their current comfort zone is not what they would want, but there's no one around to force them through tears and sweat to change it. Same thing can be said about sugar or, I dunno, comfortable cars. (I'm exaggerating again :)

I think what you're alluding to is the distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing.

"Comfortably" doesn't refer to comfort zones here, but is used in the "without major difficulty" sense (that is, one's needs are met to the point they're not stressed about food/shelter/medical care/etc.)

>You can see how society works and how rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor.

Shh, you'll wake the techno-libertarians.

"Capitalism is God's way of determining who is smart and who is poor."

- Ron Swanson (not sure if his character was a techno-libertarian, but certainly a libertarian)

In Czechoslovakia (later Czechia), there was a similar project, following newlyweds through the decades:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206923/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1070622/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14895098/

The same director (Helena Trestikova) did similar documentaries following specific individuals, often from the edge of the society (e.g. junkies, criminals).

We have seen the whole series, half of them as they were released and I'm devastated that Michael Apted passed away, I hope one of the team is able to do 70 Up. Very few things on screen have made me feel what the Up Series does, Boyhood did. There are many other versions, including in the UK, but none span an era of such huge changes in society - although, hold my drink, who knows what the future holds.

Peter getting smeared in the press and losing his job because of frank (and not even uncommon or spicy by today's standards) criticism of Margret Thatcher to go back to school and become a lawyer was special. Also that first interview with Paul's wife who shamed the director and whole production was certainly something.

There's a nice trailer here for 63 Up which gives a taste for people who haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwA0eUaRiMk

Thanks. This 2013 article covered some earlier episodes, https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-up-children-then-and-no...

> Researcher Michael Apted interviewed the children for the first film, and was struck by how Britain's class system seemed to have shaped them, even at that age: "It was very funny, the original [film], but it was also alarming," Apted told CBS News' Lee Cowan. "You could see that people's views of the world were totally determined by where they were coming from. And those who had somewhat impoverished backgrounds had a very narrow view of the world. And those who were in power had this grand view, not just of the world, but of their lives."

We actually have another one of these kinds of TV series in the UK, Child of Our Time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Our_Time

Could we change the title to "Up (documentary film series)" to avoid confusion with the Pixar film?

I've only seen the first four episodes, but they are fantastic. It is incredible how from ages 7 to 14 to 21 to 28 some individuals seem to barely change at all, whereas others appear to be a completely different person in each episode.

HN ranking history for this story: https://hnrankings.info/35512025/

Also in many countries.

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