(Updated after the 5th anniversary of
Tomorrowland's release)

Although it didn't get the greatest ratings, I did like Tomorrowland and it's overall message of hope resonated with me powerfully.

George Clooney talks a bit about the optimism of Tomorrowland in this clip here:

And this is the short dropped from playing at the beginning of the movie, that explains the optimistic premise of Tomorrowland:

Tomorrowland's ending tapped into my greatest hopes & fears for our world. Lately it’s been more of the fears than the hope that I'm feeling from negativity coming our way. It’s easy for worst fears to be set off since it always feels like the nuclear sword of Damocles is hanging over all our heads.

The scene where Casey Newton is frantically zooming around the holographic 3D Earth of the future, unable to find any place with a hopeful outcome immediately brought to my mind the endless barrage of news we hear outlining how the climate crisis is going to hit everyone everywhere and devastate our entire planet.

In Tomorrowland, we later discover her corrupt keepers have let their city fail after exiling Frank Walker (played by George Clooney). His crime is creating a tachyon like time machine portal viewer which reveals Earth will be destroyed in the future in an apocalyptic nightmare. Because of this, Frank lost all hope and simply resigns himself to despair back on Earth while waiting for the end.

Casey on the other hand refuses to believe this fate can't be changed. Because of this, she discovers a side effect of the machine (like an antenna) is its transmission of a signal, convincing the whole world to feed the wrong wolf while creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After seeing this movie and contemplating Frank's tachyon machine, I couldn't help but wonder if something similar might be happening to America and the world. We are told in the U.S. that this is the "Land of the Free" and to "Support Our Troops" because "Freedom isn't Free." But if we were really free, would we be allowed to choose more than just our political affiliation? Why are we not free to choose a peace or war tax bracket? Instead, we are forced to pay and feed the wrong wolf for wars of choice making us less secure. The United States is currently bogged down in the longest war in American history. And the insane budget of the Military Industrial Complex is a gross misuse of tax dollars, where trillions go unaccounted for. On top of all this, anyone viewing the cyclical nature of human history and recent headlines will see the danger of a continuation from our past imbalances, culminating in a 3rd World War apocalyptic nightmare.

In my personal journey, I feel as if my Lyme disease is a perfect metaphor for the negative signal that seems to be disrupting the balance of life and health in our world. I detail in my blog a little bit about this struggle with my body feeling like a microcosm, receiving (neurotoxin) a similar negative feedback signal, like one that may be infecting our global body. Lyme disease oddly mirrors the characteristics of a fanatical mind-set where the tools of reason and logic cannot break through symbolic spirochetes of ignorance, hiding in biofilms of fear feeding a doomsday driven despair that nothing we do can change the future. Casey Newton is a hero after my own heart, who I see as symbolic for the hopeful and determined part of myself refusing to give up while trying to change our fate on a personal and collective level. The same thing Casey Newton fought for in the movie is the same thing all the Dreamers of the real world are fighting for now.

The end resonated with me deeply when our heroes go in search of the world’s artists and dreamers to incite a global shift towards higher consciousness and a brighter future. This imperative becomes even more pressing in our real world when we see how societies seem to be polarizing into two wolf camps. On one side (symbolized in the image below) are those who are fearful, pessimistic and war mongers. On the other side are those hopeful artists, dreamers and peacemakers who can see a beautiful potential and destiny for our species if we could only stop the petty infighting all over our planet to instead use our war resources for feeding the good wolf, funding science, education, alternative energies and space exploration.

Imagine a future where we build humanity’s first starship without the World War and see a global culture emerge to unite the Earth and reach a destiny where our benevolent technologies are given the opportunity to bring us the real world of tomorrow without the nightmare! We have already seen the fear filled wolf speaking to all of us in the form of totalitarian / patriarchal governments and it just doesn't seem to be having much of a constructive effect. I put together this video (rated M for Mature) from an excerpt of Tomorrowland's audio (see below) to illustrate the point.

War is one of the greatest threats to our environment which is one of the reasons why my activism is centered around ending all wars and preventing new ones from happening.

Another thing about Tomorrowland that stood out to me was the idea of a dream for the future being more powerful than reality as it is in the present. Recorded in the history of the West, Christians have often evoked a future coming kingdom on Earth that is more real than the world as it was. This is the challenge of faith whether you are secular or religious, that no matter how bad things may look on the outside, the beautiful vision driving you on the inside is more powerful and thus reality can bend to the will of the dream.

The future city in Tomorrowland could symbolically represent the spiritual realm we must tap into to change our reality. The problem in the story took place when the connection with Earth and Tomorrowland was severed. Rather than sharing Tomorrowland with the world as it should have been, a dictator took over, not only dooming Earth to self destruction, but also stunting the potential and growth of the future city.

When the spiritual side has been cut off from the material, a similar situation takes shape. There are spiritually minded people (symbolically feminine) who identify with the eternal life of Spirit. They live a more utopian existence where the harsh realities, rules and lines of the world are there to be transcended. Those who identify with the material body (symbolically masculine) live an existence more similar to the nightmare Frank Walker faced; inevitable future destruction. This is why Frank viewed the world going to hell and his focus was riveted on a countdown timer. But when he came into contact with Casey the optimist, her spiritual centered orientation transformed and saved him. After the dictator Nix had been defeated and Tomorrowland was shared with the world, a new and hopeful future opened up, saving Earth from a future nightmare.

A closer look at front and back:

It is time for us all to tap into the spiritual realm to achieve the dream and transform our world into the beautiful vision of what it can be, regardless of what bad things and potential disasters are going on now.

And this vision of the future as it can be, has lead me to reach out across the world and befriend those living among opposing world powers, both of which have been going on the war path and ramping up hostilities towards each other. Here are four pen pals I made in Russia; Aleksey, Aptëm, Natalia and Victor.

Because of the power of the internet to bridge vast distances and connect us all together as fellow citizens of the world, we can see that we have more in common for peace than irreconcilable differences for war. It is through the gradual forming global brain, that we as a species can prevent the nightmare and approach our highest calling and destiny as a united civilization living in peace and prosperity.

Because of this hope I carried out of the theater, I want to share the beautiful vision of Tomorrowland with all humanity.