Everything I Learned About Personal Finance I Learned From WALL-E
In the new Pixar movie Wall-e, there’s a fantastic message about stuff: Too Much Stuff Is Not a Good Thing. There’s also a message about selfishness, gluttony, excess, and of course the environment. And Love, if robots can be in love, that is. However, the beginning of the movie shows us that on earth more stuff leads to the final elimination of useful life because all resources were used up (that’s the environmental message), but as the movie plays out there is a terrific scene where a massive mega-store is panned across the screen: Buy’n'Large appears to take a mile wide spot in a shopping center that is dedicated to the one single store.
The people on earth in this futuristic movie were so focused on stuff that they forgot that life was more than stuff. Personal finance is best understood in the context of stuff (including the Nintendo Wii that I’m lusting after, the 5 string bass guitar, the new road bike, the bigger 30″ monitor, the 40″ HD TV [and, no, I don't need a bigger HDTV - that looks almost like restraint, huh?], and the gym membership with accompanying self control). Does the stuff rule you, does it give purpose to your life? If the answer is yes, then your perspective is out of whack. Give another thought to the value of stuff. Stuff is part of what drives a capitalistic culture, but a balanced and healthy society is going to deal with the stuff and grab for something deeper.
Wall-e is entertaining. Wall-e is amazingly full of detail, and yet what I walked away with was a renewed sense of focus to get rid of the stuff and cling to the value in my family, the value in my faith, and the value in the richness of the creation around me. I live just outside of the Rockies in Aurora, Colorado and yet I’ve never skied there, I’ve not gone hiking too many times and I’ve been pretty limited in my appreciation for the Rockies. With the price of gas going up my opportunities, if the prices of gas keep going up, will dwindle. Its time to kick this appreciation thing into high gear.
If you have seen Wall-e, what do you think? Did the movie envigorate your perspective on stuff? Am I too analytical?
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July 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
[...] Everything I Learned About Personal Finance I Learned From WALL-E My wife and I are animation fans, so this one particularly struck home around here. (@ watch my money maker) [...]
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 am
I think Wall-E is a great film. I don’t know if it invigorated my perspective on stuff, so much as it re-enforced my need (and society’s need) to de-emphasize our love of stuff. I especially appreciated Wall-E’s creative ways of reusing waste, for example, using found parts to fix himself.
There are lost of other great themes in the movie, like our unhealthy consumption of “food,” that Wall-E does a good job of addressing. Great film and thanks for your post!
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:07 am
I agree that there is a message about stuff in this movie, and certainly that too much stuff is a bad thing…but it should also be clear that it was stuff that saved earth in this movie. Wall-E is stuff. Eve is stuff. All those machines in the repair shop were stuff. The captain educates himself about Earth and beauty and pizza through a computerized encyclopedia. Also, if you stuck around for the credits, you saw artistic interpretations of humans and machines working together to bring the Earth “back to life”. So I think there was an important message in there about using stuff in a way that doesn’t block out the appreciation for life and love…and that reinterpreting one’s “directive”, one’s role in life, is important.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
@tbrock - surely. I made some broad generalizations in my write-up, but I thought that there was a strong emphasis on stuff for the sake of stuff (but not an emphasis on stuff is evil).
I have since learned that there is a group of obese people that take the people on the space ship as some sort of commentary on America or the evils of obesity. The problem, of course, is that the movie takes pains to show the evolutionary concept of the body changing due to the lack of gravity and muscular straining. Its not obesity for the sake of obesity, its the change due to biology and environment. Micro-evolution is a proven scenario.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Fascinating. I could not agree with you more on the need to reduce the amount of stuff in our lives. I would even go so far as to say that after reaching a very minimal level of creature comforts, more stuff directly equates to less happiness. It certainly equates to less freedom (stuff requires maintenance) so I suppose it depends upon the extent to which you equate freedom and happiness.
That said, I had a very different reaction to the movie. It’s a cute movie - who wouldn’t love the story line between Wall-E and Ev-uh - but the message was so heavy-handed that the main thing I took from it was Hollywood, once again, trying to change the world and tell us how to live our lives. I’d swallow this a bit more easily if it weren’t so hypocritical. I wonder how many of the people who worked on the movie abide by the “less stuff is more” philosophy in their personal lives.
Personally I think the freegans make a better social commentary than do the Hollywood and Washington elite attempting to convince us to reduce our carbon footprint while they cool and heat their 20,000 square foot homes. If you’re interested in this, check out the energy use of Al Gore’s home at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
Freegans understand that all true leadership happens by example, not brute force. http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367
But that’s just MHO.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Joanna Wow, that link to Al Gore’s energy use to show leadership by example is amazingly shocking. Thanks for your other comments as well
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:51 am
Yes, there may be some “do as I say, not as I do” in celebrities and politicians who advocate environmentalism, but I prefer hypocrites who advance important causes to ones who ignore problems entirely. (I was an HIV educator for years and did not ALWAYS make the safest personal choices, but I still like to think I passed on knowledge that may have saved a life or two.)
Wall-E painted a nightmarish future softened with humor and heart. It managed to avoid being self-righteous or didactic while tackling the lofty and crucial theme of environmental conservation. Even though I feel a twinge of guilt sending trash to the landfill each week, I’d never quite thought about the grand scale of pollution the way this little film presents it.
I’m glad this generation of kids will have Wall-E’s images and message to reflect on as they grow and make decisions that impact the real future of the Earth. Sorry to be corny and ironic, but Wall-E planted a seed. It’s up to us to nurture it and think about the impact of our habits and values.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Lessons learned from a flood. Stuff is stuff. It might be nice stuff. It might be family stuff. It might be really pretty, useful stuff. It’s still stuff. Sentimental, practical, useful or useless, it’s still stuff. It has to be okay with us to lose the stuff to gain more important things. Like time. Freedom. The ability to give. The ability to share and to communicate. To learn. To grow.
Visiting estate sales is always a wake-up call to me, as I am terribly sentimental and tend to keep and save EVERYTHING. Walk around in a true estate sale and look at the collectables and bric-a-brac that were so special to the individual. It is always an impactful moment to me to realize that these treasures are not valued by any of the person’s loved ones and are sold as so much junk. Every time I go home and toss some things, de-cluttering and editing my stuff to a more manageable level. I feel an enourmous weight lifted off of me each time.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I enjoyed the movie, and think that my five year old did too. I thought that the message was great, and it was definately entertaining.
BUT, I have to totally agree with Lynn saying that it is hypocritical. After I bought my ticket to the movie, they handed me this little plastic packet for my daughter, similar to something you would get in a happy meal. Inside was a cheap plastic Wall-E watch, and several “collectors” cards. You can’t even set the watch to the right time. More trash. And you can’t tell me that this movie isn’t going to be marketed so that kids don’t want the “stuff” that goes along with it.