We live in a society driven by money, control and the relentless pursuit of growth. We believe it is progress, but at what cost.

In 1973, United Nations Television and the New York State Department of Education released Limits to Growth, an Educational Film Journal based on the influential Club of Rome report. Using one of MIT’s early computer models, the study simulated long-term planetary trends, warning that unchecked economic expansion would lead humanity toward ecological and social collapse.

Fifty years later, the consequences of consumerism, miseducation and misguided development persist, eroding communities, ancient knowledge and human connection to nature.

This global crisis is vividly mirrored in South Lombok, Indonesia.

Coastal villages are eroding, with communities facing pollution, seawater intrusion affecting freshwater, and declining fish stocks. Rural villages struggle with inadequate sanitation and clean water access. A rapid, developer-driven growth creates pressure on local land, leading to social conflicts, displacement of indigenous people, and human rights violations.

There is a delicate balance that confronts us with the moral contradiction between progress and preservation, forcing us to question modern life's comfortable illusions of perfection.