This is a repost which was posted as an additions to "All about Earth Insects, Ufo’s and Aliens"

The Film ‘A bugs life’ was said to be inspired by the Greek fable which went like this " One summer day a grasshopper was singing and chirping and hopping about.  He was having a wonderful time.  He saw an ant who was busy gathering and storing grain for the winter.
“Stop and talk to me,” said the grasshopper.   “We can sing some songs and dance a while.”
“Oh no,” said the ant.  “Winter is coming.  I am storing up food for the winter.  I think you should do the same.”
“Oh, I can’t be bothered,” said the grasshopper.  “Winter is a long time off.   There is plenty of food.”   So the grasshopper continued to dance and sing and chip and the ant continued to work.
When winter came the grasshopper had no food and was starving.  He went  to the ant’s house and asked, “Can I have some wheat or maybe a few kernels of corn.  Without it I will starve,” whined the grasshopper.
“You danced last summer,” said the ants in disgust.   “You can continue to dance.”  And they gave him no food.
The moral of the story is that: There is a time to work and a time to play.

Interestingly the Children film “A bugs life” completely inverts the original. The grasshoppers are shown to be the devilish ‘Mafia’ like, while the ants meek and innocent; The basic emotion aroused is to protect and save the ants from the Grasshoppers. It may not seem obvious at first but this new theme marks the neo-pro-active-christian-morality that runs under the hood of the modern neo-conservative American consciousness. But these are old wine in new bottles and some packed with atheist labels. One only has to translate the "Ethical egoism" of Ayn Rand or the latest avatar “Manliness” by Harvey C. Mansfield, with the moral lesson that the strong should protect the weak, Insha’Allah, It could also be written as ‘The strong should rule the weak‘.

Unfortunately manliness for the neo-cons mean, sending every one to war except themselves (after all their job is to persuade hoodwink run and maintain the war machine) and all done on a geo-corporate level with the defence industry getting all the spoils of the war. (which roughly means getting total control of earth’s vital resources) and where the new mantra being the calculus of pre-emption, that is a sort of "Total Preparedness in Total Mobilization" (both sort of exploitation go hand in hand)
But what about Womenliness? Anyway who cares about Gandhi.

At the heart of modern political science uncoils the ‘rule of exception’ and this ‘rule’ exist in a tacit assumption that politics is taking care of ones friends and harming ones enemy and one of the first lessons learnt from this tacit understanding is pre-emption. To neutralize the threats even before they materialize as such.
And as usual, this as well as the previous "strong rules the weak" are all derived from Plato’s Republic. In fact the whole ‘Republic‘ can be said to be an long and failed reply to come to terms with what these two assumptions mean, and how they ultimately come to define the nature of citizenship.
In modern times, the voice of Thrasymachus and Polemarchus came to be equated with Realpolitik by Strauss and mainly Schmitt. Strauss even went on to say that although Socrates remains Plato’s Ideal, Plato’s own spokesperson was never Socrates per see; because Socrates was his Ideal, he could never think of voicing such harsh and dangerous truths through his speech, and so he has recourse to the sophist Thrasymachus and Polemarchus to voice opinions that are facts of everyday life but at the same time dangerous as they threaten the stability of the ‘Ideal’ and the Ideal is what we all wish to identify ourselves with. Plato then tries to construct the Ideal city which will do away with the real city whose spokespersons Thrasymachean and Polemarchus are. But as he tries to construct the city in speech (The Ideal), it leads to unforeseen consequences, cause the Ideal turns out to be more absurd and tyrannical then the real.
But in the chapter dealing with the Cave, he hits the highpoint, that is in the futile exercise of building the ideal city, the city in speech or the city in clouds as noted by Aristophanes; One starts to see and glimpse the source of Man’s true consciousness, that is, the world of the Ideals. And from thereof there is no turning away from its cause, cause from there on begins the spirit of history until it finally archives the Ideal by transforming man and world by making the others (who are lost in the shadows of their caves) see and realize what is good for them and the ‘Good’ is what perfectly mirrors the Ideal.

In the same vein of ‘Plato’s utopia realized’, the children film "Antz" takes a different stance altogether with NewYork comedian Woody Allen as the main lead voice is an ant who dreams of becoming the ultimate male hulla  (a neo dandy warrior type as opposed to the neo-working class) mirroring August Strindberg’s classic 1888 play "Miss Julie" with a Shakespearian twist in the story that happens to be driven by a Comedy of Errors that land him from existential zerodom to herodom to loves utopia realized.

But as if these were not enough, Tom Hanks the multi Oscar winner actor had other dreams. On he comes with "The Ant Bully" (which rather flopped as it tried to find solution in a neo-con-harry-potterian like magic potion driven wizardry that sought to pass under the hoot (sorry I meant hood) its neo "Band of Brothers" morality)

All of a sudden it seems as if our children’s mind are now been targeted by some unearthly and Alien force, armed with the latest pokemonian neuro-biological finds and backed by the most recent Chomskian Neuro-linguistic schemes. (After all, there is some truth in the saying "Catch them young")
Gauging the essence of our times, these films in their own way seek to realize, render and reorder the world in their own self Image and that to at an ultra low latency level of self existence. But down below the semblance of these multi-angled-perspectives, unconscious to even the deep analytic minds (the authors) of these dramas, hovers a single monolithic Arch-text. Without this Arch-text it would find itself completely empty of any self content, thus it engages in a blind march, a technological emptying of the world into its symbolic cup/grail/chalice. (almost with religious conviction).

It almost seems as if there is no way out of this deep history that locks earth, man and world into its gestalt (from the outset) in a mimetic reproduction of its own Ideal-image (King Midas like with its Dionysian mimicry of a cancerous way that spread into everything it touches). The world sways in its swell and tide, all things are found accelerating, times compresses itself, the present is outpaced and obsoleted at an even faster pace to a point that the mind stops thinking, the numbness spreads, man has no time, and the past has become valueless.

And still, what becomes of the womanliness that Gandhi sought to brace his Utopia on! Rather than the ‘Ideal’ distilled from West’s challenge to the "Real City" of Thrasymachus and Polemarchus.
I think, such a challenge was explored by Hayao Miyazaki in his Japanese hit "Spirited Away". This search is repeated in his next venture "Howl’s Moving Castle", where the universal absolutes are abandoned and replaced with womanly existentials such as empathy, compassion, care and above all inner mindfullness. But the application of its most extreme form is seen in the Korean film-maker Kim Ki-duk’s "Samaritan Girl" and to a lesser degree "3-Iron". But they are not children’s film and hardly comes close to the inner mystery as handled by Miyazaki and his tyrannical studio "Studio Ghibli"

A young girl who was sadly forced to move to another city with her parents finds herself trapped in a mystical world where humans are not quite welcome and gods are to be seen everywhere. To be allowed to stay in that world she has to change her name and work in a God Bathing House ruled by an extremely powerful sorcerer Yubaba. There she meets eccentric characters and has the chance to learn more about her past."