to vote for favorites. Only 3 votes needed to get on the list.I recently saw “There Will Be Blood”. Sure it was brilliant and Daniel Day Lewis is outstanding and blah blah blah, but the emotion that it evoked in me that I found most surprising was one of humility. I have never felt less like a man in my whole life.
As an Engineer, and one with quite a bit of experience in the oil industry, none of the beginnings of the industry really surprised me, but then again, I had never given it that much thought. You take for granted rotary drilling equipment and the diesel engine. It is easy to skip over what it must have been like for industrious men who were trying to dig deeper into the earth than ever before using pick axes and horses. Even the lowly farmer back in that time had to have a set of balls that would put a modern suburbanite to shame. Scraping out a living with hoes and shovels with the knowledge that you are entirely on your own. If you hear footsteps outside in the night the only thing to do is to go out and deal with it the best you can because there is no one else.
Which is why, watching that movie, I have never felt less like a man in my whole life. My middle class upbringing and yuppie adulthood pales in comparison. You have to feel a little contempt for all of us standing on the shoulders of these giants, Starbucks cup in hand, bitching about our student loans.
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