Sushi Year Round Change Analysis

Ryan Hubelbank [e-mail] Dr. Sheila Winbourne
Science Fiction/Film: Ethics
CRN: 17583
3 October 2016
The Danger of Drastic Change: How Well-Intentioned Change Can Go Awry When people see problems, it is natural to want to fix them. Sometimes solutions to these problems may be somewhat drastic. While these solutions are not inherently bad simply because of this, massive change often has a fair amount of danger and should be handled carefully. Snowpiercer contains examples of efforts for massive change that led to an undesirable result. The major change efforts seen in Snowpiercer are the attempt to overthrow the leadership of the train and the attempt to leave the train. These efforts are well-intentioned efforts to fix problems,
On the way to the front of the front of the train, there is a short stop where the rebels who have made it thus far eat some sushi, at Mason’s suggestion. What is particularly noteworthy, however, is the point that the sushi is not served year-round. Mason explains that serving sushi year-round would not be sustainable, due to the fact that the train is a closed system. The fact that serving sushi year-round would deplete the supply to the point where there would be no more sushi in the future suggests that the number of people consuming sushi has exceeded the amount that the system can support naturally, as a result, artificial rules with regard to when sushi can be served must be enforced, so that consumption is limited and can be sustained. In addition, this excess of people is in the front section alone. If those in the back were also eating sushi, the availability would have to be even more
It is dying, and, in order to keep the engine running, it appears necessary to have children serve the role that mechanical parts once did. This is what pushes Curtis over the edge. He decides that the benefits of the system are not worth the cost of maintaining it and that the best idea is to give up on the system. While the rebellion may have been founded on false ideas that the leadership was the problem with the system, it did lead a meeting between the one who would gain control of the train, Curtis, and the one who had an idea for a better system, Namgoong. So, naturally, when Curtis decides that the current system is not acceptable, he turns to the only alternative presented. Unfortunately, this is where things go wrong beyond repair. Curtis accepts the alternative as is and that is the problem. The plan of leaving the train that was presented to him did not account for the fact that Curtis would now be in a position to facilitate the effort to leave the train. As a result, the way to leave the train is excessively drastic, relying on a bomb to literally blow a hole in the system. This is unfortunate, since the idea of leaving the train had the potential to lead to a humanity that would begin life in what would effectively be a much, much bigger closed system. Ultimately, the same questions would arise, similar to the types of issues we see today (Lazaridis, P., and A.C. Drichoutis), but more time would pass