Recently, I have been able to
watch the critically acclaimed film There
Will Be Blood. It is an amazing story of a corrupt, monstrous oilman
named Daniel Plainview (played by the ever-incredible Daniel Day-Lewis). The
story is extremely gripping (if a little slow), the characters are beautifully
developed, and the acting of not only Daniel Day Lewis but also Paul Dano and
everyone else involved is superb.
Yet one of the more psychological
reasons the film is so amazing is because it is extremely depressing and brutal
in its (I feel) very realistic portrayal of a heartless monster who represents
the worst humanity can become.
I felt quite sad and demoralized
after the watching the movie. If that sounds dramatic, I should clarify: what
made me sad was real life, not the movie.
Now some of you are probably
thinking "Wait, why be upset about real life? Sure, Daniel Plainview is
very loosely based on a book character, who in turn is very loosely based on a
real oilman, but you shouldn't get sad because of that."
No. That's not it.
What made me so grim is not
Daniel Plainview himself, but what he represents.
During one of the most captivating
scenes in the film, Daniel makes his feelings about people absolutely clear:
"There are times where I look at people and see nothing worth liking. I
want to earn enough money so that I can get away from everyone."
He hates other human beings with
a passion. To him, they are nothing but tools and assets to be used and then
discarded when their value has been depleted. He can just abuse them as he
pleases, because in his mind, they are horrible, despicable creatures who
deserve no better treatment than manipulation and exploitation.
No doubt a number of readers will
rush to point out that Daniel Plainview is not representative of anything, that
he is a completely fictional character, and that I am getting too worked up
over him.
Sadly, they are wrong. I wish
they were right, but they aren't.
The dark, depressing truth is
that people like Daniel Plainview are much
more common in real life than most people believe or want to believe.
The real life equivalents may not
be as (overtly) insane, unstable, or psychotic as Daniel, and, unlike him, they
are probably not murderers either (at least not personally). A good number of
them also likely have at least decent private lives.
But their contempt for humanity
is neither any less severe than Daniel's nor harmless in the slightest.
These misanthropes come in
various types:
The radical environmentalists who
call for extermination of humanity so that nature can "recover" from
human activity.
The various corrupt corporate
officials who only see people as consumers of their products and could not care
less how their production methods and products harm humans and the earth.
The ruthless, thuggish government
officials of many countries all around the world who will do anything to
acquire resources, maintain power, and wage war.
The cynical intellectuals and
pseudo-thinkers inexplicably heeded by the public as valuable experts who
dismiss any hope or chance for reform and a better world out of blind faith in
the unsubstantiated belief that humans are inevitably savage monsters doomed to
misery and destruction.
The various Malthusians who seek
to use the over-hyped threat of climate change, among other things, as a reason
to enforce a drastic and horrific reduction of the world's population at any
costs because overpopulation conveniently allows them to just blame human
numbers as the problem, as opposed to, say, the methods by which we live.
The eugenicists (many of whom
often spawn directly from the Malthusians) seeking to ensure only
"worthy" people reproduce.
And who can forget those lovely
Social Darwinists who insist humans must always compete and crush each other to
not only survive, but to also actually be productive?
These people may as well have
"Humanity sucks! Time for us to die!" stamped on their foreheads.
To them, humans are not gifted,
wondrous creatures who, however flawed, have great potential and are the key to
each other's productive and happy lives, but instead a disease, a cancer to be
purged.
Somehow, it is just too
inconvenient or painful for these people to realize that we are in a deplorable
state because our culture thrives on all kinds of exploitation and savagery.
Compassion, progress, and cooperation are the enemies of this system; it would
fall apart if those things were introduced into the central mechanisms.
We are forced to be horrible
creatures to survive. It follows that those who are the most successful at
becoming the monsters the system wants them to be tend to make it to the top. As social
science studies show, powerful and wealthy people tend to exemplify
awful traits as a natural result of being dominant. Thus, the dominant humans
have a greater chance of living horrible personal lives as well as horrible
lives in other fields. Furthermore, a cycle begins to form when we realize that
a significant amount of the many types of the aforementioned misanthropes tend
to be wealthy, powerful, and influential people (just like Daniel Plainview)
who contribute to the world and perceptions of humanity becoming even shittier.
Go figure.
There are few greater depravities
than dismissing human life, the gifts and power of relationships with other
people, and the potential every person has to make our world a better place. I
don't want to even try to picture what would have to happen to lead someone to
develop such a horrific worldview.
I'm not sure if There Will Be Blood intended to
be anything other than a character study, but I think it has much more to say
than it lets on. In any case, we can add the Daniel Plainviews of our world to
our list of major reasons why we need to not only grow up, but speed up our
growing up.
