SYMPATHEIA: A short film and essay - An interdisciplinary challenge to neoclassical economics

My project is a 13-minute original narrative film that aims to ground and humanize what I view as the rationally detached economic ideas inherited from the Age of Reason, Isaac Newton and influential philosophers like Adam Smith and economists like Milton Friedman. Sympatheia, the title of my film, is an ancient Greek term that means "organic connections" which I use as a counterpoint to the isolation and alienation that our atomized society seems to be struggling with since science eliminated morality from economics. A root cause of this atomization is the incorporation of Newtonian physics into our economic belief system. The film involves the challenges of a homeless man, John, struggling with a voice in his head that has a suspicious, politically tinged agenda. John is forced into a quest for internal peace, self-respect and identity, while the voice in his head forcefully argues for a different, ridged path to happiness based on an absolutist, mathematical interpretation of economics common to the Chicago School and the writings of Milton Friedman. Under this rubric our notions of freedom and liberty become psychologically challenging and socially unsustainable.