If you have children under the age of twenty or love animated pictures, you may be familiar with an movie that came out in 2013: The Croods. If you somehow missed it, I highly recommend clearing a few hours and finding a copy of it. If you’re thinking that there are better ways to waste your life, you’re probably right, but it is a cute film and as someone who has seen it maybe fifty times or so, I promise it won’t be the worst way to pass the time.

Why? Why am I pushing this children’s film on you, you may be wondering. Let me give you a brief synapsis and see if you can draw any parallels to the world we find ourselves in today. The Croods is the tale of a prehistoric cave family, told from the perspective of the eldest teenage daughter, Eep.

The story begins with Eep explaining how their family is the last surviving one in their area, thanks to the strength and discipline of her overprotective father, Grug. Like many teenage children of overprotective parents, Eep is sort of over the whole cramped-cave lifestyle and her father’s family motto of “Never not be afraid.” I am over a decade past my teen years and I feel for the girl; who would relish being trapped in a cave with their parents, grandma, little brother, and sister for days on end?

I get cold sweats just imagining it. It’s at this point in Eeps life, that she breaks one of her father’s many rules and sneaks out of the cave at night in pursuit of a mysterious flickering light. At the other end of this light, Eep finds a roving young man by the name of “Guy.” Guy is a thinker, an innovator, and also someone who is well aware that the world that they have known is ending.

Guy can also make fire, which is something the Croods are both fascinated and terrified by. Eep’s family instantly hates Guy: he’s new, he wants them to leave the cave and travel into the unknown, and Grug is clearly threatened by Guy’s ideas and the respect that Eep and the others show him.

Grug knows that fear and rules have kept his family alive and he has no interests in Guy’s “facts” that the world is crumbling around them. It takes the destruction of their cave and obviously impending doom for him to reluctantly follow Guy to a distant, foreign place-one free from spewing lava and earth-splitting quakes.

Have you made the connection? For some odd reason, my brain just linked the current state of our country with this four-year-old kids’ movie. For a second, let’s lower our outraged fingers from those in opposition of our views on life and try to understand one another’s perspective. There are some of us in this country that could absolutely represent Grug right now: you’re scared because the world is changing and you don’t know how to control it to keep life safe and the same as it has always been.

Here’s the thing: life cannot remain the same as it always has been. If it could, we would literally still be living in caves, or trees, or as single-celled organisms (depending on how far back you want to go). Life hasn’t been and is not currently safe or great for a lot of people, and we are at a place in time where we can no longer ignore injustices.

With advancements in technology and our knowledge of life, we have come to a point where many of us want to leave the caves behind and brave an unchartered world where maybe all humans have rights. Governments are both transparent and accountable, everyone has access to education and healthcare, and we give a shit about the environment and this planet that sustains this ever-evolving life of ours.

Maybe some of you Grug-types just cannot leave your caves and would prefer to die there, but if you choose that life, then get out of political offices and stop trying to keep the rest of us in there with you. Here’s our perspective: we see the shifting world and want to make those changes as positive as possible; we value facts and truth over fairytales and outdated tradition, and we don’t want to be crushed by your fears and ignorance. In the end of the movie, even Grug has a change of heart. Be like Grug. He’s a smart caveman.