That first lapse-time movie was made to persuade those in power to do the right thing and stop the mowing and move towards conservation.
Arthur C. Pillsbury believed that all people need is the truth. If they saw the reality, he believed, they will choose to do the right thing voluntarily. He was right about most people, most of the time.
After seeing the film those in power stopped the mowing the same day. The year was 1912.
Most of us do the right thing if we know what that is. But sometimes failing to do the right thing is not a mistake; sometimes there is another agenda. Pillsbury assumed that when those in power must be mistaken or lack understanding or simply be too lazy to care. Those were possibilities that made sense to him; but that was an incomplete understanding. When those in power are acting on another agenda they cannot be changed with the truth.
Pillsbury learned one essential lesson from what he observed. He decided to make sure that the people themselves had direct access to the information they needed. In 1912 he invented the lapse-time camera to connect people to the world of wild flowers, which had been overlooked even by such conservationists as John Muir. Muir's energies were focused on saving the Hetch Hetchy, a battle he lost.
Pillsbury kept working. He began lecturing and showing his motion pictures. Eventually he would speak at every major town forum and every university of note, including MIT. He expanded his lectures every year, adding new films and insights. He was determined that the miracles of the natural world be understood, that their truth be accessible to everyone.
In 1927 Arthur Pillsbury completed the invention of the microscopic motion picture camera. Seeing the world beyond the scope of the human eye awakened people to another aspect of nature. After that time there was an explosion in related research.
Pillsbury went on to build the first X-ray motion picture camera and the underwater motion picture camera opening up more new vistas. Pillsbury refused to patent his inventions. He wanted their use to become common to all of us. He had solved the problem he identified during those hideous days when San Francisco burned.
Arthur C. Pillsbury died in Oakland in 1946. The scope of human vision had expanded, thanks to his inventions and tireless lecturing. He had made nature visible as it had never been before but that was not enough. He had not calculated for the impact of those greedy for money and power.
Government had not changed; it continued an upward trend for control coupled with the corruption. Those who profited through generations came to accept this as their prerogative.
We need to see government for what it is; a system that has been converted from service provider to wealth source for those who control it.
Disaster is endemic to all politics and for the same reasons. Coupling a lack of accountability with the temptation to take always draws those inclined to steal.
Katrina has illustrated just how bad it can be within our own shores; Iraq has demonstrated how bad America can be when the tools of corruption are applied internationally. These are not examples of incompetence, rather they illustrate sophisticated schemes for converting the institutions of government into profit centers for those holding power.
Government is efficiently doing exactly what those in power want it to do.
Our Founders did not expect this government to last 20 years. They viewed the government they established as a kind of model needing beta testing, expecting it to operate within a set of defined and limiting principles.
Government is not supposed to be doing anything we can do ourselves. In the Bill of Rights Numbers 9 and 10 make that clear. So why did government steadily take over jobs being handled privately?
For the same reason bank robbers rob banks. That is where the money is.
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