Or, Why We Need to See More Grownups in Art and Entertainment
There is no doubt that killing people—sometimes all of humanity—was a major theme of the 2026 Oscar-nominated films, from One Battle After Another to Sinners to Bugonia, and even the OBAA homage in which Conan was murdered at the end of the Oscars ceremony for no apparent reason. And we could say that this is an understandable urge in the face of what seems to be humanity’s obvious failure to live with compassion, wisdom, and love, which has been on full display over the past year. But what this type of thinking, even for entertainment, misses is that an immature minded response will never solve the problems created by our immature minds.
And immaturity is exactly the source of all the “evilness”1 depicted in these and other recent films (and in real life globally). But the solution is not giving in to an infantile urge to throw all of humanity away like a toddler would break a favorite toy in frustration when it doesn’t work the way they want, no matter how good it might feel, for a moment. The only long-term solution is to learn how to become healing parenters for ourselves, others, and the planet, in all aspects of our lives, including in our art and entertainment.
You may be thinking, “What harm is there in expressing our disappointment, perhaps even hatred, toward certain other people in a few blockbusters and indie films now and then? I mean, people do suck, and it’s not like we’re going around actually killing people in real life.”
First, there may be a great deal of harm in it. Meta-analyses, experiments, and cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have all found that consuming violent media (including films) correlates with both short- and long-term violent behavior in children and adults 2 So although we may not leave these stress- and adrenaline-charged violent films and start a bar fight, some may. And, more importantly, even for us, we may be more prone to curt replies and missed opportunities for compassion if we steep ourselves too much in the culture of stress and violence so prevalent in film today. In addition, it seems like in a nation where far too many individuals are killed through murder and mass shootings, feeding developing minds (meaning both children developing biologically and adults still developing into higher levels of consciousness) violent entertainment is a risk we really don’t need to take. The childish mind in adults, when it is not integrated and expressing itself in a healthy way, will feel a sense of satisfaction (tied to safety) watching the “bad guys” get mowed down by bullets in a film like Sinners, which can easily be tapped into by their nation (or its ally) killing long-time enemies in real-life war.
A major theme in the quadrune mind model is that the content of the mind does not determine the level of consciousness we are using in the moment. Yes, some of the people killed in these films were doing absolutely terrible things to their fellow human beings. But the desire to kill them is what tells us our level of consciousness, not what they did to “deserve” our hatred and wish to eliminate them. This is particularly important when it comes to the real world, where we will have to grow beyond the desire for revenge if we are ever to create the non-violent conditions we want for ourselves and our families, while too often failing to see that the same is needed for “them” and “their families” if peace is to become the norm.
And to the bigger point, are we not killing people, in a metaphorical way, when we think they “suck?” Because what this presupposes is that they are permanently stuck at an infantile, childish, or adolescent minded level of functioning in the world. And often, we may take this type of attitude toward “people” in general, writing off all of humanity as incapable of spiritual growth, as Bugonia concludes. But when we do this, we fail to see that our true human nature (not the behaviors, feelings, and thoughts of our immature minds) is spiritual. When we live our true human nature, our behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed toward reducing suffering and increasing healing for all. This gives us a sense of purpose as human beings.
So to look at human beings in this negative light is to kill the truth of what we really are. It’s to kill the potential to grow up in individuals and societies. It’s to negate our true spiritual human nature.
However, we are only able to live our true spiritual human nature from our Grownup mind. The Grownup mind is governed by the pre-frontal cortex, which integrates all parts of the brain so they can work in harmony. The Grownup mind integrates the messages of our infantile, childish, and adolescent minds with compassion and love, so that we can express all of these minds in healthy ways when appropriate, under the wise direction of our inner Grownup.
Through the lens of the quadrune mind model, we can quickly see problems arise with the past year’s top films.
The immature minds have different reasons they may want to eliminate one human, a group of humans, or all of humanity. In One Battle After Another and Bugonia, it appears to be more of an adolescent minded drive—to fight against certain people or all of humanity for ideological reasons. In Sinners, it seems—particularly in light of the final violence between Smoke and the white supremacists—to be a childish minded expression of “us versus them”— anger and retribution to eliminate those who have wronged our people for centuries.
But where is the adult modeling Grownup behavior in any of these films? Not in these and other characters (see Perfidia’s parenting style) who put violence above love.
And here’s a key point—the Grownup mind does allow for expression of the three immature minds in healthy ways. But a cathartic mass shooting of the oppressors is not a healthy expression of, or healthy for, these minds.3 Even if we say that the overall theme of Sinners is resilience and survival, we must consider that the Grownup mind is the only one of our four minds that does not have survival (of the self, the group, or even one’s ideology or culture) as a goal. It is only survival in the context of the need to benefit all beings and the planet that matters to the Grownup mind. And why killing off all of humanity to save the earth and animals, à la Bugonia, is also not the answer, because humanity is part of this interconnected whole that must be “saved.”
As we discussed in our essay, Humanity’s 98% Failure Rate for Fulfilling Our Human Nature, yes, we are falling short of our Grownup, spiritual human nature and full potential as human beings. But the solution is certainly not to write off humanity and contemplate its demise. What we need is not to fantasize about killing individual humans or the overall destruction of humanity. What we need to do it learn how to grow up and help others grow up, as well. As more and more of us express our Grownup spiritual nature, our societies and cultures will change.
We are transitioning from the Age of the Adolescent to the Age of the Grownup, which will inevitably come with struggles. And the adolescent mind, which has been encouraged to express itself in unintegrated ways by our STEM-obsessed modern culture, will see the end of this age as the end of humanity. But when we understand that reason is not the highest calling and ability of human beings, we can approach the irrationality of the hatred we see in the world in a different way. When we consider spirituality beyond rationality, we see that there is hope for a far greater purpose for humanity. One in which we express our true spiritual nature even in the face of irrational violence. One in which we find meaning in living up to our human potential, regardless of the seeming lack of meaning in much of what’s happening in the world today.
At the end of One Battle After Another, we have the impression that the daughter, Willa, is going to be okay, because she’s able to save herself. Unfortunately, the quadrune mind model says that it’s extremely difficult to raise ourselves into our Grownup mind without caring, supportive relationships during childhood and even into adulthood. In other words, her story, told with the parents that she has, is unlikely to lead to an adult who can live to reduce suffering and increase healing for all beings and the earth, unless she finds some other positive relationship with an adult living more from a Grownup mind off screen.
In his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, Paul Thomas Anderson said, “I wrote this movie for my kids, to say ‘sorry’ for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them. But also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”
But what is the encouragement that young people would get from One Battle After Another, Sinners, Bugonia, or simply hearing their parents say on repeat what a terrible world we’re living in? That sounds like more discouragement than anything to me. We have to change the narrative to one that recognizes that we can all collectively do better when we live from our Grownup mind.
Infants, children, and adolescents cannot parent themselves. To be prepared to live more maturely in the world, they have to see examples of adults living maturely in the world. We cannot pass off an immature world to them and expect them to raise themselves and fix the world in the process.
However, adults can learn to be healing parenters for themselves, through practices such as mindfulness, lovingkindness meditation, caring acts for others, and more. It is in fact our generation, those of us already in our adulthood, who must learn to do better for the sake of all humanity.
The wonderful thing about growing up is that it’s never too late. As Daniel J. Siegel recounts in his book, Mindsight, even at age 90 we can do the work to integrate our brains. An integrated human brain is what allows us to live our Grownup integrated spiritual nature.
These films seem to memorialize a failed world. But why not try to change the world, including our understanding of it and humanity, through film?
It’s not that these films are “bad” (any more than our infantile, childish, or adolescent minds are “bad”). They just miss the mark of what human nature really is, and lose out on a valuable opportunity for healing in the process.
The idea that humanity is capable of overcoming our immature minds, even in the face of extreme violence and hatred from others, is not a pipe dream. We have amazing exemplars of people using their Grownup mind to embrace nonviolence in the midst of horrible suffering, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi.
And the thing is, when we have so far to go in creating the Age of the Grownup—the time when behaving, feeling, thinking, and acting from our Grownup mind is supported by the culture in which we live—we can’t squander opportunities to promote the development of the Grownup mind in ourselves and each other. With the reach that a film like Sinners has, what kind of difference would it make if the message was to heal each other, rather than to destroy each other? What kind of world could we leave for the next generation if we dedicated as much of our energy, work, relationships, and selves to reducing suffering and increasing healing for all, rather than fantasizing about inflicting more suffering on those we deem evil—those who in fact are the ones most in need of the loving parenter influence of the compassionate Grownup mind.
So I can’t say I got very excited about Sinners and One Battle After Another sweeping the Oscars, no matter how nicely lit or brilliantly acted they were. Because what is the message that these movies are sending to people of all ages concerning how an adult should act? It’s not one that resonates with our Grownup mind and spiritual human nature.
I think this evening, I’ll watch Perfect Days or Jojo Rabbit. I’ll remind myself that films, including those that get nominated for Oscars, can create the type of mindful environment that our Grownup mind needs in which to thrive. They can even inspire us to forgo our own safety for the sake of others, including when those others are a part of the “thems.”
- In The Hidden Gospel, Niel Douglas-Klotz notes that Jesus would have said, “A good tree brings forth good fruit, an evil tree brings forth evil fruit,” in the Semitic language of Aramaic. Douglas-Klotz says, “And in Aramaic, as in all the Semitic languages, the word for ‘good’ means ‘ripe,’ and the world for ‘evil’ means ‘unripe.’ So if we were listening with Aramaic ears, this sentence might sound like this, ‘A ripe tree brings forth ripe fruit. An unripe tree brings forth unripe fruit.’ This literally makes a world of difference. The tree is not morally bad or morally good. It is simply ripe or unripe.”
- Huesmann, L. R. (2007, December). The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research. The Journal of Adolescent Health.
- For an example of a film in which the childish mind is expressed in a less harmful way, consider The Replacements, a film much beloved in my house. This is also clearly a movie about “us” (the replacements) versus “them” (the pro players, plus the other teams the replacement players must play). But the overall narrative is one of communal bonding among the replacements. In other words, the focus is more on strengthening the “us” and less on destroying the “them.” I would argue that, after watching The Replacements, one is left less with a desire for violence against the “them,” and more for a desire to “rise above” collectively with the “us.” Again, the level of consciousness is the same—I’m not arguing that The Replacements gives us any more examples of the Grownup mind in action—but the effect on other living beings and the world within the film is drastically different. And the effect on us as viewers is certainly less negative, and perhaps even slightly positive. After all, the childish mind does need to learn that the family or other close-knit group can provide safety, support, and love before the Grownup mind can learn to extend that love and offer that safety and support to all beings and the earth.