There Will Be Blood: new film illustrates the source and ramifications of capitalism and evolution

This weekend, I lonely enjoyed, as I now traditionally do, a special artwork. This artwork, that relieved me from yet another quick-but-painful week of human driveling, took a mighty swing at such individual worthlessness and hit a home run. The artwork I am referring to was the existentialist film There Will Be Blood, currently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, among other nominations.
A master of inspiring a vapid outlook on life, the movie is naturally unpopular among the Neanderthal masses. Based upon the book Oil! by the genius Upton Sinclair, the film tells the story of oilman Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), a character with diametric nomenclature, who lives a life comprised of sincere misanthropy. And his animus is not quelled by sympathy or "love," (refer to my new article in the February issue of the Danegeld, page 6: "Valentine's Day: Celebrating Evolution?") as it dives into depths rarely seen in the average cynic. As he puts it, "I look at people, and see nothing worth liking. I see the worst in people."
His anger and contempt for humankind drives him to abandon his son, and take him back so to use him for profit, and to murder two liars and thieves. Of the two men Plainview kills, one pretended to be his brother so to benefit from his success in the oil industry and the other was a young religious leader who, before being murdered, was willing to follow Plainview's condition of loudly proclaiming, like he meant it, "I am a false prophet; God is a superstition," in hopes that he could make a valuable commercial deal with Plainview.
While others walked out of the theater, flipping off the big screen, I sat close to the front row twiddling my thumbs in pleasure. Why is that? Is there any virtue in such empty morals? The honest truth is that irony pervades every aspect of the question, because all morals are transparently empty. We are not divine creatures, but are merely convoluted evolutionary creations, who likely aren't even close to being an endgame, and being a product of inexorable, competitive evolution, are fooling ourselves by believing in human communion. Misanthropy, which is our human nature, and is therefore the only hint of what our soul is, in the purest form represented by Plainview, is what drives the purest capitalism, that is exemplified by the brutal greed Plainview embodies as he monopolizes the oil industry. Capitalism is founded not on competition, which is only the mechanism for its backbone, which is greed, the true foundation for capitalism. And greed is a mainstay for misanthropy. Plainview epitomizes this reality, the inevitable link between misanthropy and capitalism, when saying, "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I can't keep doing this on my own, with these people."
Capitalists love to spout how competition is the best way to stimulate growth and breed creativity and excellence. But the fact is that cooperation is much more effective at these things, as it is more efficient in accomplishing the same ends, because it does not take players out of the game ("many hands make light work"). It does not require some to succeed and some to fail; the benefits of success can be reaped by everyone. Simply said, cooperation does not leave blood on its hands like competition does. But competition is the only working model we trust, because it coincides with our nature, and nature in general. It is a wishful delusion to think that it is not contradictory to believe that social Darwinism is false, but original Darwinism is not.
There is naturally no ethic in mankind, even among the belief that virtue is its own real entity, because we do not do anything for the sympathy or sole benefit of others. Everything we do is for our own self-promotion. People will refute this claim, but their error is they are only observing the obvious benefits; they are not looking behind the curtain. Altruism is an illusion, and its clever magician is Darwinian evolution's contrivance, natural selection. Natural selection will develop whatever weapons it can to promote the fittest model, even using tools that initially seem contradictory. This paradox is one often seen in the higher animals. Although the reasons are numerous, the most prominent motivators are perception from others and status, which are then used as capital for personal benefit.
Richard Dawkins nailed it in The God Delusion when he said that it is expected for animals, of any species, to base their behavior upon unconscious responsiveness to kind and generous traits in their fellows. Beyond reputation, altruism helps establish "an advertisement of dominance or superiority." As we evolve, our currently perceived morality will digress, but our ability to thrive as a virulent hierarchy will progress as our exploitation of our peers falls closer in line with the beat of natural selection. Many question how this could be, since such behavior would cause a certain deprecation of our own species. But their problem is in how they phrased the question. Natural selection is not a mechanism for species to survive and evolve, but rather it is one for genes. As Richard Dawkins expresses it in The Selfish Gene, bodies are merely "survival machines" for genes to do their work.
There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece because it skillfully glorifies evolution by embracing competition (therefore greed) as the singular virtue (in being our constitution of living), if any exist, and forces it upon unsuspecting adult-children with a sardonic smile. It is beautiful in its depiction and profound in its exploration of the absolute core of human nature. It is relentless and wrathful, yet is forgiving enough to give humankind the opportunity to understand itself. There Will Be Blood is an affronting, foreshadowing title of the inevitability of lives lost and, in fact, gives hope by giving substance to the nihilism of the physical world by laying out a blueprint for mankind to characteristically maximize their benefit in the inescapable and ubiquitous process of evolution.
Lastly, another great existentialist film this award season worth seeing, for those who savor depressing themes and dark tones, is No Country For Old Men (from the book by Cormac McCarthy). The title of the film is self-describing, as the plot elaborates by debunking human delusions in violent and psychologically sadistic sequences. The title and the direction of the movie characterizes the vital evolutionary component of death as a means of avoiding individual wasteful consumption after completion of evolutionary purpose. It's a real treat!