The Ark and Living on the Basics
The moral case for knowing how hard it is to live on just the basics.
There are certain basic things we all need.
You need to eat, you need to have some kind of water, we need to have a place to stay when the weather gets bad or we just need to sleep. It's hard to argue with anyone that there's a person who doesn't need these fundamental things. Many people might not have them but that doesn't mean they don't need them. Not having these things usually leads to bad ends for those who don't. How to get these things or at the very least give people them in some way is an incredibly difficult thing to provide. It would be easier if everyone had them all the time and there was no threat to being able to lose them. When you do lose them, it becomes your entire focus to try and get whatever you've lost back. Your life becomes a narrow thing where you can't necessarily think about anything else.
In doing so, you end up cutting what you might think of as luxury things even if some others might think they are just as important as the basics. Like the ability to relax and feel comfortable, maybe watch television or just sit around and have a conversation with another person. People need to be able to relax but it's harder to do when you don't have these fundamental things. You can't sleep as long when you don't have a solid roof over your head. Sitting still feels uncomfortable when you have an empty stomach. Thirsty people try to do everything they can to find some kind of water. It's a lot like an emergency that is happening constantly with new problems coming up all the time. Especially because once you lose one of these basic things, you're more likely to lose the other things.
The Ark is very much about what it's like to function on the basics. Residents of The Ark like Sharon, Spencer, Alicia and Angus, as played by Christie Burke, Reece Ritchie, Stacey Read and Ryan Adams, are living on the absolute basics. Living on a space ship completely cut off from the rest of the world they don't really have any other choice. Especially with things constantly breaking down and the people in charge having died very early on. It's really hard to do anything other than focus on the more important things. If they don't, they're going to die in pretty short order. So it's only natural for them to focus on that to the exclusion of all other things. While some might want to have the luxuries like being able to just sit and feel comfortable, it's not something they can do.
Most people don't have to live on a space ship far away from the abundant resources of the earth. Although a lot of people don't have the fundamentals they need even on earth. It's an important reality to learn about and you should do yourself a favour and explore the tragedy of functioning off the basics by checking out The Ark as soon as you can.
You can watch The Ark on SyFy in the United States and CTV in Canada.