I saw the
movie Cloud Atlas
yesterday. I was interested in the
message it sends that “We are all connected” and “Our lives are not our own.
From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present and by each crime
and every kindness, we birth our future."
The movie
traces several souls over time, across six story lines. It is someone’s idea of reincarnation. To me it is another example of how deep into
a new Dionysian world we have gone. The
Western Tradition, as revealed by Hollywood, is exploring its roots and
transcendence. I can’t say that this
will become a blockbuster but surely the making of it with such a well known
cast and crew is notable in itself.
The theme we are all connected might be the
summation of much of our current techno-world.
Every piece of new junk that gets coined is about staying connected--Twitter,
tweet, ipod, and Face Book. All are used
to grovel in a phatic social life, part raw and visceral, and part virtual. This is contemporary America.
And, it
confuses the hell out of many, mostly those who lean to the conservative side
of life. To them America is about Rugged
Individualism and the American
Dream. In their world, we are all
individuals living free and bound to no one. Our lives are ephemeral and there
are no connections over time. The theme
of this movie should be very disturbing to the radical right.
The main
theme also reminds me of an old Anthropology idea, the Psychic Unity of Mankind, from here:
The
postulate of "the psychic unity of mankind" states that all human
beings, regardless of culture or race,
share the same basic psychological and cognitive
make-up; we are all of the same kind. The postulate was originally formulated
by Adolf
Bastian, the "father of German anthropology", who was a classical
German humanist and a cultural
relativist, who believed in the intrinsic value of cultural variation.
Bastian passed it on to his similarly minded student, Franz Boas,
who, as the "father of American anthropology", transmitted it on to
all of his students. Edward B. Tylor introduced
it to 19th century British evolutionist
anthropology, where it became a fixture, defended by all the major British
evolutionists. The postulate, indeed, was essential to the great comparative
projects of evolutionism, which would be futile if cultural differences were
determined by differing biology. For the same reason, it has been central to
later comparative projects, e.g. Radcliffe-Brown's,
Barth's,
Steward's, Godelier's
etc. Today, the postulate is shared by all anthropologists (exceptions are hard
to think of).
The spin off is the idea we are all connected psychically. The modernists hated that idea.
Yes, we live in a Romantic world; the 21st century is reincarnating the ideas of the 19th.
