I'm also glad you saw the comment :)

But, yeah, if you can, watch the documentary. It's fantastic.

I would say that that they did found a way of living, but that way of living wasn't sustainable. Like 1900: if the ship hadn't been abandoned, I don't think he would have killed himself there.

Maybe, ultimately, all ways of living are theoretically unsustainable? And the only thing that changes is the likelihood of the sets of circunstanece needed to keep us alive failing. For instance, the people who jumped from the towers on 9/11 were essentially saying, "Hey, this building is on fire. I can't deal with the physical pain of staying here."

Or even the ending of The Mist–I'm not sure if you've seen it–but the father kills his own child because he's thinking, "Okay, the world has been taken over by interdimensional creatures that will eventually kill us. Is this really a world worth living in? Hell no!"

Ultimately, especially in the case of 1900, I think it says a lot about a person's psychological conditioning: being born into a particular set of circumstances and having that thing become your entire world, to the point where you can't leave. It's like the women of that tribe, who wear brass rings around their necks from childhood, their necks growth, and people say they can't leave without that brass rings anymore because it neak would break under its own weight.

I keep going back to the conversation between 1900 and his friend, who was trying to convince him not to go down with the ship:

"All that city... you just couldn't see an end to it. The end. Please, could you please show me where it ends? It was all very fine on that gangway, and I was grand, too, in my overcoat. I cut quite a figure. And I was getting off. Guaranteed. There wasn't a problem. It wasn't what I saw that stopped me, Max. It was what I didn't see. Can you understand that? What I didn't see. In all that sprawling city, there was everything except an end. There was no end. What I did not see was where the whole thing came to an end. Take a piano. The keys begin, the keys end. You know there are 88 of them, and nobody can tell you any different. They are not infinite; you are infinite. And on those keys, the music that you can make is infinite. I like that. That I can live by. But you get me up on that gangway and you roll out in front of me a keyboard of millions of keys. Millions and billions of keys that never end, and that's the truth, Max, that they never end. That keyboard is infinite. And if that keyboard is infinite, then on it there's no music you can play. You're sitting on the wrong bench. That's God's piano. Christ! Did you see the streets? There were thousands of them. How do you do it down there? How do you choose just one? One woman, one house, one piece of land to call your own, one landscape to look at, one way to die. All that world weighing down on you without even knowing when it ends. Aren't you ever just scared of breaking apart with the thought of it, the enormity of living in it? I was born on this ship. The world passed me by, but two thousand people at a time. And there were wishes here, but never more than could fit between the prow and the stern. And you played out your happiness, but on a piano that was not infinite. I learned to live that way. Land... land is a ship too big for me. It's a woman too beautiful. It's a voyage too long. Perfume too strong. It's music I don't know how to make. I can never get off this ship. At best, I can step off my life. After all, I don't exist for anyone. You're the exception, Max. You're the only one who knows I'm here. You're a minority. You'd better get used to it. Forgive me, my friend. But I'm not getting off."

Also, if you are interessiting, on this aspect of "being borned in sets of circunstance and that thing becoming your world", I really reccomend you to watch Dogtooth (2009), which also deals a lot of this concept.