It is a movie version of an excellent book by Jerzy Kosinski. I loved the both the book and the movie. Despite being plagued by what Ken Wilber brilliantly describes as the "pre/trans fallacy", it is a great look at how people project thier own vison of reality on everything (and everybody) around them. Chance, the main character, is totally transparent and is supposed to be essentially desireless himself, so he becomes the perfect screen for others to use in their projections. In this sense he is "like a child" and the last scene of him walking on water I interpret to be an allusion to Christ and illustrating that Chance is "enlightened." Like I said, horribly flawed by the "pre/trans fallacy", but a great movie anyhow.

Since I mentioned it, and without going too much down a tangent, the "pre/trans fallacy" is that since both pre-rational or pre-conventional thinking and social development and trans-rational and trans-conventional thinking and social development are both "non-conventional", it is easy to confuse the two. This is where our ideas of the "noble savage" come from and thinking about (among others) Native Americans as "ecologically minded". As Wilber says, it is very, very different to not destroy the environment because you lack the *means* (primitive peoples), and *choosing* not to do it even though you have the means. That's another version: Pre-industrial vs. Post-industrial. Calls to solve the problems of industrialization, which are very real and serious, by *regressing* to a more primitive way of life are not the answer. We like things like dentistry too much. In fact, the problems of industrialization are created by solving the problems of primitive society. What we need is to move forward, not regress.

This is a bit off topic in your original post, but once I read Ken Wilber's thinking in these areas something fundamentally changed in me and I am unable to watch a movie like "Being There" and not see the intellectual flaw. It is just *amazing* how often we run against the pre/trans fallacy in our society. Once you're exposed to it, you see it everywhere -- especially on places like NPR. In the movie, Chance is, essentially, a sheltered and socially primitive, or pre-conventional person. We can't all be like Chance, or there would be no food to eat. The analogy just goes nowhere.

Enlightenment must be "post-conventional" if it is to exist at all. The pinnacle of human psychological development can't be a return to infantile fusion with the world. Again, Wilber says it best when he suggests that infants are not in a unknowing state of grace (heaven), but are instead in an unknowing state of suffering (hell). When they get older, they learn just how bad it is! The progression then, is not a return to the child-like state, but to go beyond the ordinary state. So: unknowing suffering to knowing suffering to knowing the end of suffering.

Whew! Sorry. I study this stuff and it interests me. I have some of the same issues with "My Dinner with Andre." If anyone is interested in this kind of thinking, I recommend Ken Wilber's "A Brief History of Everything." It is no exaggeration to say that it fundamentally changed the way I see the world. In fact, I'd love to hear what some of you think about it...

Jim