Secularism and Traditionalism

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2006)

I thought that the film was one of Tom Cruise's better projects. It didn't need a gazillion special effects ("Minority Report") to bring the audience into a world that is so visually and culturally different but not unlike our own.
One of the biggest issues the movie deals with relates to modern day politics. Who says the Western way of life is better than anybody else's? What right as a freedom-loving people do we have to usurp the freedom of others to live as they want, to pray as they want, to pursue their own dreams and raise their children as they see fit? Religious and secular bureaucracies have imposed their will over different peoples under the guise of White Man's Burden. The Inquisition. McCarthyism. The Final Solution. Segregation. These so-called Manifest Destinies have often employed less than scrupulous methods in the name of god, government, and "bringing civility to the savages". Though history need not wonder who truly is the savage.
When a society begins to move toward modernization, often times it drifts little by little away from tradition, and not just religion or spirituality, but its roots. Knowing where we've come from, knowing our own cultural identity can help us understand where we're going as a united people and establish a balance between the past and present, secularism and tradition.