Holte's corner

Darwinism in the Movies

Some good recent movies: "The counterfeiters", manages to combine a movie about the Holocaust with a crime and technology tale. It's well worth seeing. The real story is even better: http://www.lawrencemalkin.com/kruegers-men-the-story.html .
Another good movie to watch is "There will be blood" which profiles turn of the century wild-catting and corporate shenanigans.

Both profile a world where self-interest is betrayed by moral confusion, and where people are making decisions of life and death in a world that seems darwinian.

Anyone who studies the theory of Ichinen Sanzen, or the totally different but equally interesting theories around the Sephirot (or vessels) will soon see that this world is an interpolation of different forces. The "darwinian" existence exists. That existence is always present. Yet movies like "The Counterfeiters" and "There will be blood" tell us that even in the most despairing, depressing conditions people are people, and yet people can be more than mere animals.

"There will be blood" tells us that there can be hell in the heart of the digging for Gold. The main characters ruin themselves because they are driven by greed, lust, and insatiable desire that no amount of Gold -- or black gold -- can satisfy. The character played by Daniel Day Lewis builds a fortune -- and in the process kills people, drives off or kills family, and winds up rich, depressed, and alone. The preacher in the story uses religion to pursue wealth and loses his fortune in bad investments. Murder, betrayal, and oil. They seem to go together.

On the other hand the Counterfeiters is almost light-hearted by comparison. To the tune of beautiful tangos the story unfolds as a counterfeiter winds up in the death camp of Sachsenhousen and comes to be entwined with the German who caught him as a counterfeiter and a Jew. The story is about counterfeiting and comradery. The hero is willing to do anything to survive except rat out a fellow inmate and so goes along with one fellow inmate who sabotages the effort to counterfeit dollars. This eventually makes all of them "heroes". But mostly it reveals them as human beings surviving as human beings among animals.

Hell is in wealth. Heaven is in loving fellow human beings. Scientists have found that the strongest source of endorphins is the act of giving. Yet people seem determined to do anything to find oil, to defeat one another, and to destroy those who get in their way. It is said that the measure of the Buddha was in his actions as a human being. When are we human beings? Does it take awful situations to wake us up even a little?

Chris

Posted by cholte at March 24, 2008 03:39 PM