John Stuart Mill once wrote that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied and suffering than a pig content and comfortable; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

Yesterday, while watching the film Metalhead, I remembered Mill’s statement.

The opening scene contains a dialogue that can be read as a criticism of a society in which human beings have been reduced to homogeneous, identical, interchangeable, low-value and narrow-minded units, no one standing taller than anyone else, with wishes, aspirations and horizons all reduced to the same level. Consumption and satisfaction are the only standards of value. Human worth becomes almost nothing, and security can be monitored by surveillance systems that have no understanding, human feeling or capacity to recognise difference, like guard dogs watching a herd of pigs.

After hearing the opening dialogue and remembering Mill’s statement, it was difficult not to imagine that such a society had accepted the reversal of Mill’s words as its foundational belief:

“Better to be a pig, comfortable and satisfied, than a human being dissatisfied and suffering. Better to be a fool happy and content than Socrates in difficulty and pain.”

*********************

And here is a translation in sense of the opening dialogue of the film:

“I don’t think I could ever stand living like a pig.”

“What’s wrong with being a pig?”

“I think it’s degrading.”

“Degrading? Why?”

“Because you have to live in a condition where your nose and your backside are on the same level.”

“And it isn’t only your own head and tail that are level. Every day, when you look at everyone else, all you see are creatures whose heads never rise above anyone else’s backside. That is all they see and experience, all day and throughout their lives.”

“What kind of society is such a society?”

“An equal society.”

Aydin Areta