Resource Title

I AM: The shift is about to hit the fan

Summary

“What if the solutions to all the world’s problems was right in front of us?” asks Tom Shadyac in his documentary movie I AM.

After an almost fatal cycling accident Shadyac emerged with a new sense of purpose in his life. Realising that his life before his accident was unfulfilling he sets out on a journey to investigate how he as an individual, and we as humans could improve the world and the way we all live, challenging the greed and excesses the world is experiencing.

Resource Details

Description

Age: PG

The movie takes the viewer onto a journey where Shadyac shares his realisation that more – his movies grossed nearly two billion dollars, he had a “A-List lifestyle,” a 17,000-square foot art-filled mansion, exotic antiques, and private jets — was less:  “What I discovered, when I began to look deeply, was that the world I was living in was a lie…Much to my surprise, the accumulation of material wealth was a neutral phenomenon, neither good or bad, and certainly did not buy happiness.” 

In the movie he seeks to identify the underlying cause of the world’s ills

“I didn’t want to hear the usual answers, like war, hunger, poverty, the environmental crisis, or even greed…These are not the problems, they are the symptoms of a larger endemic problem.  In I AM, I wanted to talk about the root cause of the ills of the world, because if there is a common cause, and we can talk about it, air it out in a public forum, then we have a chance to solve it.”

In his quest for ‘enlightenment’ Shadyac interviews renowned ‘thinkers and doers’ from various disciplines of the science, philosophy, academia, and faith worlds such as David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggart, Ray Anderson, John Francis, Coleman Barks, and Marc Ian Barasch to ask What’s wrong with our world, and what can we do about it?” Ulitmately, what he discovered was that there is more right with the world than wrong – the heart and not the brain is the primary organ of intelligence.

Ironically, in the process of trying to figure out what’s wrong with the world, that “human consciousness and emotions can actually affect the physical world.”

As a result, Shadyac, the multi-billion dollar director radically changes his life selling his Hollywood mansion and moving to a mobile home community, trading his jet for a bike and beginning a new and simpler life.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

currently not available for streaming

Available from:

I AM is widely available to rent and for purchase on DVD.

  • Check your local library’s DVD collection

More info at https://www.iamthedoc.com