As I've mentioned before, "Documentaries to Make You Think" will be a monthly article. As always, I'm on the lookout for more interesting articles that spark thoughts. Since you guys really seem to enjoy documentaries as much as I do, I'm open to any suggestions of documentaries to watch. Leave a comment of your suggested documentaries and if I happen to write about any of them in the next article you might receive a little reward. *hint hint*
~A huge thank you to Elysiae for the layout!
Blackfish is an hour and a half documentary that follows the life of captivated whales. Some captivated whales are captured in the wild when they are young and sold to the infamous Sea World. (Sea World is an entertainment facility that holds performances of sea animals to the public.) While living at Sea World, the whales are taught new tricks that are to be performed. In hind site, it's an enjoyable event to watch, but many don't realize the ethical dilemmas behind such events. The whales seem to perform their desired tasks fine, but when it comes to natural behaviors it gets pretty scary. At Sea World, whales from different parts of the globe with different ways of doing things are put together in small tanks. Because of the stress of a new environment with new individuals, the whales often attack each other, which in some cases have led to the death of whales. Not only that, but a these whales also tend to take out their stress on their trainers. There have been numerous accounts of deaths or injuries to humans by captivated whales. Many court cases have been sought out against Sea World, specifically, because of these attacks, but somehow Sea World always seems to pull through. They claim that their whales aren't experiencing negative psychologically effects and are blaming the human trainers for all of the whale attacks. Something about this doesn't seem quite right.
Check out the documentary for yourself on Netflix. The trailer can be found on Youtube here.
This documentary focuses on the struggles of the introduction of feral children back into the human society. Feral children are children that have grown and have been raised without any human contact. Children who have been raised by animals take on the behaviors of those animals so they too can survive in their environment like the animals can. There have been many cases in which humans have found these children out in the wild and have taken them in. The main problems people face with acclimating these children to normal human life is getting the children to feel empathy for others and getting them to talk. It comes as surprise that humans aren't naturally empathetic creatures, but that they learn to be empathetic while they are young from other humans. It appears that feral children can be taught to be empathetic, but learning language seems to be difficult. The younger a human is taught language, the more they will retain that knowledge and be able to learn additional words. The same goes for feral children since they aren't taught any human languages unless they are subjected to human society. Social interactions are crucial for the development stages of humans.It's odd to think that the way we are brought up really can make a difference as to how we act and the way we think.