Above and Below

'The Tree of Life', directed by Terence Malick (a former Heidegger scholar apparently) apparently tries to commmunicate an understanding of the human condition as participation in two worlds according to the law of each. The law of Nature, which is of scarcity, conflict, predation and death; and the law of Grace, of unlooked for forgiveness, riches, gifts and love.*

The contrast seems to map onto matter and mind, that physical things are scarce, vulnerable to destruction, while ideas and intentions are free, durable, and infinitely shareable (possibly with the exception of things like 'The Secret', which include in their content the fact that they are not widely known - past a certain point of sharedness, there is no longer a secret and the advantageousness might arguably be lost). On the basis of these properties of information, Richard Stallman (GNU) has been prophesying a Hegelian synthesis of communism and libertarianism through open source software. For him, the future could be mythtv for everything - labour freely and cheerfully given in the exercise of a skill, use shared across a global community, functions available to all.

What I find interesting is the way the world below seems to naturally meet the world above, and the way the law of grace bears much fruit in the world of nature. The law of nature relentlessly drives species and group level altruism, and the transcendence of instinct in strategy. The law of grace teaches the groups to go beyond altruism and make the Other the center, and community is made of strangers, and the USA becomes a superpower.

* I haven't seen it.

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