information that does not transform is just gossip.

— Tarzie Vittachi, Award-winning Journalist, Vice Sec General of UNICEF

SURVIVORS GUIDE TO EARTH is a culture shifting project founded by filmmaker Matthew Cooke, dedicated to magnifying the universal human values described by all the world’s great traditions.

The primary agenda is using the 6 steps to remind us of our purpose and bring us back to our sense of self, a place of wonder, imagination, and possibility.

survivors guide to earth documentaries

  • The 6 Steps to Surviving Earth

    The feature documentary covering the ambitious initiative to radically shift culture away from materialism to the human values of compassion, sustainability, and communal well-being.

    This sweeping study explores the unholy trinity of militarism, classism, and racism identified by Martin Luther King Jr., and covers the urgent reforms required to overcome the multiple crises threatening humankind.

  • Surrender The Story

    A 90-minute documentary on the power of letting go of the narratives that dominate our lives.

    By intertwining the filmmaker’s personal story of overcoming addiction with broader narratives of humanity’s addiction to stories, the film reveals how surrender is the universal path to the peace, harmony and enlightenment promised by all the world’s great traditions from Abrahamic to indigenous. Hindu and buddhist.

    The documentary integrates history, neuroscience, and spiritual insights.

    Real-world examples of restorative justice, conflict resolution and forgiveness, highlight the universal values that can lead us out of the maze of illusion and attachment.

    Ultimately, "SURRENDER" offers a profound exploration of how letting go of our constructed identities and narrow thinking can end the war within ourselves, the prerequisite for ending war in the world.

  • The Ghost Who Wrote The U.s. constitution

    To the vast majority of America, the identity of the 35 year old man who wrote the final draft of the U.S. constitution is a secret, hidden in plain sight. Knowing the identity of "The Ghost" completely changes the entire way we understand our nation, past and present.

    This film reveals the life of Gouverneur Morris, the blacklisted author of the words “We the People," who forged a unified national identity from a constellation of sovereign states.

    He was over six feet tall, with a wooden peg leg marking a scandalous past. And unlike most of his peers, he stood vehemently against slavery.

    When the slaver James Madison took the US into an expansionist war in 1812, the author of the constitution thought the document was such a failure he suggested New York and the north-east should secede.

    Although the most moral of all the “founders,” Morris remains a specter, his legacy obscured by the celebrated narratives of slavers Madison and Washington. This has been no accident.

    The Ghost Who Wrote the Constitution is a riveting exploration of a visionary whose ideas and character have profound relevance in today's America, unable to reckon with its past, and still imprisoned in a cyclical struggle for its soul.

  • The Women Who Invented The Middle Class

    Most of us have never heard of the founding mother of labor rights, the trailblazing factory inspector, who freed children from forced labor, and helped create weekends, and an 8-hour work day.

    After the American revolution, the country was in a financial crisis. Wages barely covered costs. Poverty and hunger were rampant. Then came the real revolutionaries.

    Women’s rights activists and abolitionists who decided to create an opportunity for liberty that included everyone.

    For most of human history there was no middle class. 1842 was the year the seedling of the American dream broke ground. It took a revolution, led by women, to bring it into reality.

    By the time the baton was passed to Frances Perkins, the visionary behind the Roosevelt administration, she was standing on the shoulders of giants, mentors who believed the basic principle that science and technology should be used to improve people’s lives. These were the founding mothers of the middle class.