Thought Experimentation Numero Tres: I am a monster. We all are.

Morality of Morals

Oh goodness. My last thought experiment. My final thoughts on the matters and concepts of Parasites. What have I learned? This is the question that flits across all our brains, because it is the question we are most commonly asked at the conclusion of a class, a story, the end of a day. Ever since I was in preschool, my parents would ask me at the end of each day to tell them one thing that I had learned over those past eight hours. Why this obsession with myself having learned something? Not just something either, as if it could be anything at all, but something that can be described in a concise sentence using words, such as “I learned that yellow and blue make green.” I feel Parasites led me deeper than this. Yes, I could say I learned to write using more “I statements” from my first thought experiment, or that I learned about my opinions concerning death from my second thought experiment. But did I need the class to learn these things? I say no. I used the class to become aware of these things is how I would put it. I think this idea of having to learn something goes along with the idea of having to find meaning in the classes I take, as if they mean nothing if I cannot work out a concise synopsis of what I have studied. Why does a meaning make something ok? Justify the stories we have read? Justify the authors of these stories? Can a meaning really make something good or bad? Why must we classify everything in this black and white way, as being good or bad, meaningful or meaningless? These are the questions that spark the beginning of this experimentation of thought.

I feel as a class we have been labeling so much as being good or bad, particularly with books like “Filth” by Irving Welsh and movies such as “Shivers.” Everyone spoke on how uncomfortable “Filth” made them and how “disgusting and disturbing” the main character Bruce Robertson is. He is labeled as a bad man with no redeeming qualities. The book automatically seemed to generate the response “What is the meaning behind this?” Yet why do we expect a moral in literature? Why is it that the redeeming feature in literature? Someone said: "I kind of like the way people read when they're looking for a moral...the one lesson that will bring the whole story together." This is true, as a child I recall all my Arthur books and Bernstein Bear’s having very clear lessons that were completely black and white. It is no large wonder that we continue to look for this structure in books and stories now. Yet as I grow older, morals have become more complex and less black and white. There are more factors and exceptions, more causes and effects. I have to compensate for the negative aspects of life too now. I need to mix the black and white. As I have gotten older, I have reached the grey area, where problems can no longer be solved by the Bernstein Bear’s advice.

We begin life as dichotomous thinkers, but we must change this style of thought as we mature. Many do not. Many fight this change. Many still see arguments as us versus them, bad versus good, etc. We need to break these binaries because they hold us back. In a fellow student’s blog, he pointed out that “When binaries are broken, when people bring up the middle ground, when an alternative way of looking at a thing is suggested, there is this tendency to stop.” I think this plays greatly into the discomfort of “Filth.” We are presented with a human who is a monster to us, yet he is human. We want to give him the title of monster or animal because that dehumanizes him, but we cannot step away from the fact (yes, the FACT) that Bruce Robertson is a human being, the same species as the rest of us. I think many did stop reading, because they were not comfortable with seeing the grey area human beings actually live in. My fellow blogger continued on: “Here is the left and the right; here are the monsters, how separate are they really? These Jesus-lovers and blasphemers are both preachers, both monsters…”

Filth is not that far from non-fiction, and perhaps that is why we do not want to see a moral. We do not want to apply it to real life. We want to keep it in the pages. Keep the grey area in the pages. So we demonize Bruce Robertson. Yet personally I enjoyed “Filth” and actually got the most out of it than any other assigned Parasites reading. Because I CAN relate to Bruce, I see the parts of him that are within me. I saw it from the beginning. I have expressed my problem with self-compassion and self-love, so it is personally easier for me to see the dark side of myself and my darker inner workings, the workings that are within us all. In the first chapter of the book Bruce speaks of the games we play with each other. “The games are always, repeat, always being played…most times it’s expedient not to acknowledge their existence. But they’re always there.” I do play these games, they make up much of my life whether I always realize it or not. I act differently with different people, give different identities of who Alaina Brown is. Bruce is staring at a flower woman’s ‘tits’ at one point and realizes that “she catches me staring, so I give a neighborly wave, and hold up the can of windscreen defroster in one hand and the scraper in the other and let my shoulders rise.” We all create an image of ourselves appropriate to the situation. I bullshit papers so that professors think I am as passionate about every world issue as they are, I bullshit job interviews to be who they want to see. It is all a game of dress up, a game of pretend. It is the game of life.

In games, a useful strategy is to find your enemies weaknesses and use them to your own advantage. Bruce makes a point of remembering everyone’s Achilles heel, for everyone does have those weak points, those buttons to be pressed. “Something that crushes their self image to a pulp. Yes it’s all stored for future reference.” I know that to make my mother cry I simply need to blame her for something that has to with my health. I know if I raise my voice at all to her and use statements that declare “it’s your fault….you did this” she will fall to pieces and apologize for everything, even if she has done nothing. I know that if I bring up my boyfriend’s problems with emotions I will win any argument and strip him of his manhood in a way. I know that if I guilt trip him using my eating disorder he will feel horribly, for example if I am to say “I WAS going to eat a snack for once but then you called and made me stressed…” I know he will feel a wave of shame. I know that one of my friends will trip into a spiral of self-hate if I bring up her ‘secret’ (but not at all) smoking habit or any sort of bikini bodies. I not only know these things, but I use them for my own intentions. I never thought I would inherit my mother’s inclinations to guilt trip, but I have, and it has gone deeper than that. I remember these Achilles heels of my loved ones so that I can win arguments, seem more intelligent, or simply feel better when I am angry or depressed. “We’re enjoying the twisted but undeniable sexuality which is part and parcel of the complete dominance over another human being.” I think many of us find an odd joy in bringing others down when we are, or to gain something for ourselves. Not thirty seconds ago I received a call rejecting me for a job I thought I had in the bag, a job I thought I had put on the perfect identity for. I am so upset that all I can think about is this fantasy of whoever got the position tripping down some stairs or for her to be so awful that the store owners will be at their wit’s end. I have spent five minutes mocking those who interviewed. I want them to be brought to my level of desolation. “There are only a finite number of bad things that can happen in the world at any given time. So if they’re happening to someone else they aren’t happening to me.” This is a selfish way to look at things, but it is what I do and I do not doubt it is a common thread among humans. Can we really label me a monster, as being despicable, as being selfish, for this?

I think we can learn from Bruce, from his self directed interests. He tries to give in to his wants. He doesn’t want to finish a porno at one point; he wants pie and whisky instead. So he does it. At one point he takes “Bruce Robertson time,” which is something I personally need but do not give myself, minus the bacon rolls Bruce takes with his. He goes a little extreme with his self-centered values, such as when Toal briefs him on a murder case and all Bruce thinks is “typical Toal, concerned with the state of mind of the cunt that got murdered.” He then cares more about biting into his sausage roll and how Toal has ruined his day, not by bringing him into his office to talk about this horrific murder case, but because now he does not have condiments for his roll. Bruce also declares that there is “no way would I put my neck on the line for any spastic in this place, although obviously I keep them from thinking otherwise.” He is protecting his self interests, which is an important lesson, but one which we do not really learn. From childhood we are taught the lessons of being generous, sharing, and of being selfless. We are taught these in very clear and direct ways. Yet we are not so obviously taught the importance of self-interest and self-love. We are selfish creatures because we, by nature, are wired to look out for our own well being for survival. Fighting this nature leads to negative consequences. I fought against doing anything for myself, and as a result I have issues with identity, self-love, anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder to top it all off. My brain went haywire when I stopped doing anything for myself; it is actually self-destructive. So although Bruce is self-destructive in the behaviors he chooses to indulge in, the fact that he accepts his self centeredness could actually be seen as very healthy. At times Bruce says a “satisfying glow comes over me.” This is the feeling I long for, search for, and hunt for. He is not fighting his nature, while I am.

We unfairly demonize Bruce for giving in to his nature. We call him a monster or an animal because “he is so despicable.” In class we tear him apart, until someone brought how "we can demonize people, but it doesn't mean they are necessarily bad." What about how white power groups demonize blacks and other similar examples? We do not see this as being just or fair, yet we do it to so many members of our own society, no matter how ‘open minded’ we are (or say we are). I see murderers or individuals such as Bruce being called monsters or animals, because this not only demonizes them but dehumanizes them. They are human beings, yet they are given a title that declares them to be something else entirely, a completely different species unlike us “upstanding citizens of humanity.” This ties into a lot of the controversy that director Jean Painleve provoked with his documentaries, as described in the book “Science is Fiction.” Many felt uncomfortable with his narrations of these ‘creatures.’ Painleve says that “science cannot be disassociated with human values,” yet we separate it so much as being humans vs. everything else. When people act in a way we dislike, we say they are monsters, or animals. Yet we are animals. We are all monsters.

In the film “The Love Life of the Octopus” we do not want to anthropomorphize the octopuses mating because it is so intense, like rape, and therefore ‘animalistic’ to us. It is not even called sex or making love in the animal world. It is mating. Humans are not like this, we protest. We are civilized and selfless, only monsters or animals ‘mate’ in this way. So we feel discomfort in watching the octopuses’ love life, because it sheds light on our own similarities. The similarities that are not so civilized and pretty. It is no wonder the preferred nature films are those in the style of Walt Disney, where animals are shown to be cute and cuddly, living sparkly little lives in gorgeous settings. These aspects of animals are compared to humans, because then we can see ourselves as being adorable and leading sparkly little lives ourselves. We ignore our nature and accept only the parts which we choose to see. How we help those in need, how we can speak words to each other, how we have families etc. Yet the beast is within us all. Painleve once produced a film “Blood of the Beasts,” which shows the workings of a slaughterhouse, which reveals a hideous realization. We kill as animals do. Seeing humans ripping apart cow hides, tearing out the guts, siphoning the blood of their kills reminds us of our true nature. Our nature of being monsters, of being animals. A more modern example is the documentary ‘Food Incorporated,” which many express a great distaste for. Ignorance is bliss to us. We cannot handle the truth.

At one time before the feature presentation began, they would show a documentary. But “eventually it became fashionable to arrive late and skip the documentary altogether.” Documentaries are still not as popular as other films, and the ones that are popular tend to show aspects of life we as individuals cannot blame ourselves for, such as the health of the nation or Jesus camps. Do we not want to see our true selves? Are we hiding under the mud that is humanity just as sea creatures do when light comes to close to exposing them? Perhaps we long for the morals that popular films provide us, in a nice tidy box where we do not have to think about it or seek it out. It is presented to us at the end of the movie. “It exhausts the mind when we want to be entertained.” In “Science is Fiction” Painleve describes the dilemma of filming underwater animals while not shedding too much light upon them, because that affects their behavior and they hide. Like the aquatic creatures shunning excessive light, we too shun too much life shed on our lives. On who we really are and our true nature. Painleve confuses us “by making the strange seem familiar, it comically confounds our desire to clearly delineate ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

I know I constantly want to fight my nature. I want to fight these selfish feelings I have described, I want to be what is advertised to us as ‘good.’ If it is in my nature, though, can it really be seen as bad or good? It all comes back to this obsession with binaries and dichotomies. My nature is just that, nature. It encompasses both good and bad. It is the greyest of grey areas. So can I really change that? No, I do not think I can. I can wish to be someone different, but all these traits of my nature that are ‘bad’ will not go away. They cannot. Even Bruce, who is the most accepting of his monster inside, has moments where he wish that monster was gone. After Shirley gets a pap smear and is afraid there is something wrong she goes to Bruce’s pseudo-aid, and he thinks “just looking at her there, at her distress, just for a second, we wish we were stronger. I wish I was somebody else, the person she’s mistaking me for, the person whom she wants to mistake me for. The person who gives a fuck.” Even if we wish to change though, can we really? Can we teach a lion to be vegetarian and not hunt, can octopuses learn to mate for life instead of just for reproduction? No. We learn our nature as children, and it cannot be changed from there. Bruce learns his nature in part from his father, as the all-knowing tapeworm within discloses. “You started to become aware of the words he used that would make your mother cry. You studied him.” There is a saying that inspired the movie “7 Up” which goes “give me a child at seven and I will show you the man.” The idea behind this is that there are certain fixed qualities of our nature from the age of seven and up. Qualities we cannot change and they are not good or bad, they are just grey.

So I am lead back into the idea of morals of meaning, and if a meaning or moral automatically makes something ‘good.’ What meaning do we find in Painleve’s films? What meaning do we find in “Filth?” Maybe there is none. Maybe meaning is just an idea we use to filter out media such as this. It is another defense mechanism we use to keep ourselves from seeing our true nature, the less sparkly parts of humanity and life. It is the rock and mud we use to hide from the light. These stories could be showing us just how messed up everything is. Maybe there are no lessons. Maybe there are no morals. Maybe we create the concept of morals to get something out of shitty situations where nothing else comes out. It is true that I have analyzed “Filth” and Painleve, from which one could say I found meaning, but I think I just summarized what they do between the lines. The hidden words showing our hidden nature. I realized things about myself, some I wish I could change and some I am surprisingly ok with.

I sometimes wish I did not mock people so frequently, bullshit so much, think dark thoughts. Sometimes I wish I did not have the urge to "just go down the candy aisle and open all the jelly beans and watch them stream out" or steal things from the grocery store just to see if I would get caught. Yet I am now ok with these thoughts because they keep me grounded in my reality. They remind me of the fact that there are these less attractive features in us all, and that we need these traits to survive. We need to make others feel inadequate so we appear more adequate and therefore more confident and capable of finding a mate. We need to feed off others despair to realize our own good fortune. If there was no despair in the world, we would not realize the good parts of our lives. So we feed off this host. Bruce is a parasite. He acts as though he does not need anyone but he needs to feed off others, he needs these games for life. We all do. We are all parasites. We are all animals. We are all monsters. Evil and good is within us all. There is no dichotomy. It is all grey area.

Writer Hate Down the Rabbit Hole

I have begun to doubt myself as a writer. I am not used to criticism of my writing, I am used to praise. I am used to being "the writer" in my family of math freaks. Without that title, I do not know who I am in my family. What is my purpose, my function then? What am I good at if I lose writing? For I think I have lost writing in a lot of ways. I cannot seem to write anything amazing anymore. Then again, maybe I never did, maybe the idea of what is amazing is adulterated, a delusion if you will. The expectations held of me have never been too high when it comes to writing, as my entire family hates writing and I went to a technical high school where I was in the minority of 'writers.' I could put down gibberish and not even check it over and receive the praise I long for so much. For I am a personality that runs on praise, on acceptance, on love of who I am. Of course, this becomes a problem when I personally cannot give myself this. Rarely do I praise myself, or accept who I am, for I tend to hate myself if I am not told otherwise. I am very emotionally dependent on others, which is no bueno. No bueno indeed......

So now that I am back in a class that actually focuses on our thoughts and writing, I realize how lazy I have become as an author and how difficult it is for me to accept any kind of constructive criticism. All I do is rant and rant and rant for this is how I think. I think out loud, thus why I talk so much, and for some reason I hate this crucial part of who I am. I assume people are annoyed with me, and just long for my pie-hole to close up. Or, in writing, for my pen to dry up and my computer to die. I have begun feeling as though all my words are " ineffectual bleatings" as Bruce Robertson says of Amanda Demmings. I can just see him telling me, in his uncensored manner, "you are dismissed girlie."

So why have I been feeling all this so strongly as of late? I think it is due to the Thought Experiments. I read everyone else's and adore their style and compare it mine, and see only negativity. I observe comments of praise on others, yet I feel attacked on mine (recall my issues with criticism, I am rationally aware I am not being attacked. Sometimes our irrationality gets the better of us though.) I fall down this dark hole, shouts all around me. "You are shallow, you cannot give any deep thought...You bimbo....You talk too much you write too much.......Shut the hell up Alaina....You are a bad person....You do not belong anywhere.....Give up. Give up. Give up. Hate who you are....." There is no bottom as of yet, and the words are all around me and will not stop. I keep hoping at the bottom there will be a magical land of positivity, but it never comes.

Rationally I think how these thought experiments are meant to push our limits and make us feel uncomfortable. Perhaps that is what happening to me and my brain is freaking out. Yet I cannot get out of this hole.

Thought Experimentation Take Two-Death

Death: The Everlasting Fear


Before diving in, I must come clean with my fears for this experiment. My main fear is that everyone will write about the same things as I, on death that is, and that I will have lesser ideas. On subjects like "Death" I do not rant well. I can go on for days about trite subjects such as the weather, the Ugg boot and short combination (I detest it, to share the short version) or how Dairy Queen took away their S'mores parfait and therefore directly contributed to children's happiness and confusion that a delicious treat they had once eaten disappeared (also that it was my favorite...and they have all the ingredients there for Pete's sake). Yet I do not tend to participate in discussions on such heavy, overarching topics like death. Do I scare away because of this self-image issue of looking dumber? Do I scare away because I have no ideas or opinion? Do I scare away because Death is a topic everyone has an opinion about and thus there is a greater chance of them disagreeing with me or making me feel dumb? Or do I scare away because of my own fears and apprehensions surrounding Death? I actually do not know the answer to these questions, because while reading the "Vampire Lectures" by Laurence Rickels (which obviously deals a lot with Death and various ideas surrounding it) I realized that I simply never think about it. I have no opinions on it. I have no arguments or ideas. Why have I never realized this? Clearly this is the reason I shy away from the subject in conversation, but why have I even shied my mind from it? These are many questions that require answers in this thought experiment. I suppose my only other fear with this is that I will not be able to make my own opinions and ideas and will simply sponge up others in the process. I do not think I will though, as in my explorations of Death I used many sources, from other people to books to class discussions to movies. I think this gives me a well-rounded base for exploration.
My biggest issue in thinking about death is that it just doesn't seem possible to me that we could just die. It is too extreme of an idea to me. What about the other part of me? What about my soul and thoughts and persona? That has to go somewhere. I think it is a form of energy and you cannot simply destroy energy. It cannot just die. I find it to be ‘spiritual matter.’ Rickels brings up how “There is a death we cannot ignore, that we must conceive, and that is the other’s death. It is always the other’s death that cannot be circumvented or overlooked.” To me ‘the other’ he speaks of is within us. It is that spiritual matter. Reincarnation makes the most sense to me, as it is a displacement of this matter. An energy transfer if you will. Our soul does not die, it comes back to the Earth in the form of a new body. This concept is key in many major Indian religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and even some Greek philosophers and religions. Yet I see many people’s responses to the idea of reincarnation as being very judgmental and that it’s a somewhat crazy notion. Yet "matter cannot be destroyed and the mind is a powerful thing, so who is to say we are not reborn?" as Rickels aptly puts.
I think that many people do not wish to see themselves as reborn because it basically means that we are all a 'part of the universe,’ from which there is this loss of individuality. I personally have this fear, I realize, as it goes along with my obsession of being special and extraordinary. Yet if I am simply a part of this universe, I am so along with everyone else. When I die, I will just be absorbed into the universe. I long to see my self in all things and in all things see my self, which is the healthier way to look at being a part of the universe, but I simply cannot. I wonder if that is what will die, not my spiritual matter but my individuality, or at least my own sense of my individuality. My energy will still be here, but my ego and my idea of 'being' will die as I merge with everything. A classmate brought up that if “you are rooted in identity you identify with wants and needs...I do not think you can be fully happy in this state.” I must agree with this. I think that I need to see myself in the larger scheme of things, the larger spectrum.
I tried to go a bit farther into this particular concept of death, of identity death. I have heard people (usually after some sort of drug trip) say that they felt that "all of my family and friends and experiences and everything, EVERYTHING could be illusionary." This naturally leads to an intense feeling of being totally and completely alone. In “Dracula,” for example, the character Jonathon increasingly wonders if reality is not becoming “a sort of awful nightmare.” This is after he is bitten by one of Dracula’s brides, and clearly the idea of his death (the death of his ‘other self’ or persona but not his physical body) is freaking him out something fierce. I cannot imagine being in this rare situation, where I would know that my personal self is going to die. I honestly would not know how to deal with it, and my reality would certainly change a great deal.
Our brains really cannot comprehend our own death, which is why it is such a difficult topic. It has actually been studied how we do not ever die in our dreams. We may come close, but we never actually see or more importantly feel and experience the moment of death. Our brains cannot, as I said, comprehend it (The International Association for the Study of Dreams). “When it comes to represent the unrepresentable, one sense is cut off, shut down, so that in its place hallucinations can be released” (Rickels). Avoiding the thought of dying is an evolved response and is what keeps us alive, because thinking about it is so unsettling it could turn us away from hobbies, dating, finding a mate, and reproducing. I can see how it actually depresses people though, to think about Death. If you look at it as this thing of impending doom, and that all the things you do, from hobbies to friends and family, are really just a means of distraction from overwhelming truth that we will all die. I believe we need to look at how humankind as a whole has most emphatically not been given the tools needed to foretell death for a reason. However, when we see others die it reminds us of what is in store and we do not like to think about it. We spend much of our lives pretending it won't happen. When we see someone die, we lose the ability to fool ourselves for some time.
I know I fear change, and as human beings our brains naturally fight against it. Death is a huge change our brains almost cannot deal with it. When someone dies they ARE NOT coming back, which is a much greater change versus them going on vacation or something of that nature, a temporary change. Maybe this is why people hold séances or see mediums. They long for something to be the same, for whoever has died to have the same voice and mannerisms and be here, our life, somehow. Even those who believe that "death is just another stage to go through" cannot be sure their unconscious has accepted that to be true or if we're just telling ourselves that. One cannot know until they experience a close death, a brush with their own mortality etc. It all comes back to the giant unknown that is death. We cannot even know our individual reactions to it as they will most definitely change. “In the young-child’s-eye view (which in the adult continues to beam up from the unconscious) our own life is indestructible. His majesty the baby is a control freak who thinks he is all powerful.” As children we consciously think that we cannot die. It is inconceivable. As we grow and learn and start witnessing death, it becomes a greater reality and our consciousness tells us that it is our imminent future, and this is a realistic thought that the majority of us have. We all know that we will all die someday. Yet unconsciously we still do not truly believe it because of what I have been saying concerning our brain’s inabilities to do so.
The inevitability of death does not imply that life is utterly meaningless. We simply cannot look at it in this way. Why would we have ever been created if we had no meaning? I am personally a spiritual person that believes in some sort of higher power or energy source, and I think that something had to create us. Something made us with a purpose, meaning we as individuals must have a purpose. Why else would we keep evolving and becoming stronger and in greater numbers? If we are indeed worthless, just here to die, then why wouldn’t we have died or been destroyed long ago? I refuse to admit or believe that my life is meaningless. Maybe this stems from my longing to mean something, maybe not. I can just barely comprehend death, so trying to comprehend meaning absolutely nothing is next to impossible for me. I cannot believe such ideas because I do not want to. Rickels says that “trip begins…when you have finished it” and I think that is how our world gets turned around on the idea of death and dying, when we try to keep it in place.
Other ideas of where this energy or matter goes were argued to me by classmates. Someone brought up to me that perhaps the substitution for this energy is the energy of the impact we have left behind, such as how it affects the people we know or our unfinished work. Or how "we live in other people" and that we leave bits of ourselves in the people we know (our thoughts, our affection, etc) and that changes them a little bit. I personally see this as a bit of a cop out. Yes we have an effect on those around us, but what about those who really do not? Rickels brings up how “in many countries the view was real popular that anyone who died alone…was bonded to his own return.” Clearly this individual who has died alone must transfer his energy another way, as he cannot through others. This then brings up the concept of the undead, another kind of ‘returning’ to Earth.
I think of the ‘undead’ to include zombies and vampires and the like, and I simply cannot even force myself to be afraid of it. I have become so immune to those concepts that it does nothing to frighten me. I think of a bad movie I would get on my Netflix Instant Queue. All of our generation has become so desensitized to the‘living dead’ when it used to be a horrifying idea in generations past. However, with the concept of reincarnation I think we are all the living dead in a way. We are the reincarnation of ourselves, an‘other’ from another lifetime. This is another reason many do not believe in the suggestion of reincarnation. It is another concept too extreme for our brains to handle in my opinion. We are like vampires; we corrupt various shells. The only difference is that in reincarnation we corrupt shells of different lifetimes while vampirism corrupts shells in one lifetime of that being. For example, in‘Dracula’ the character of Lucy is bitten by the Count and is now a vampire herself. Dr. Van Helsing points out to the Lucy’s brother that the vampiric body he sees before him "is not the Lucy you love...it is a shell corrupted!” This is a scary thought, that we will become evil as the living dead, for “victims detest being overtaken by vampirism....to enter the fearful state of the undead” Rickels points out, but my idea of reincarnation’s ‘living dead’ is not the same. When one hears the term “the undead” we assume they are evil, because they are not us, the living. People hide and have hidden for years behind crosses and religion from the undead, because it “represents the power of good over evil” (‘Dracula’) and therefore assumes the undead is evil. We are the ones who have made the concept evil though, with videos and stories of zombies eating brains and vampires sucking blood.
Our goal here in these stories of vampires and werewolves and other versions of those who are ‘the living dead,’ I believe, is to continually dehumanize the dead as we dehumanize our enemies in war. This dehumanization allows us, the living, to say we are not like them. We are not dead. It leads right back into the fear of death and feeds it heartily. For “you can be dead while yet alive, but there is also too much life in death…there is a between state, which is the vampiric state, that is the state of being two, doubling. Doubling takes over when the borders between life and death no longer hold.” This is a state we fear, where once there were two completely separate dichotomies there is now “contamination” spilling over. “This is what is so scary. Not that death is battling life, but that with the introductory offer of undeath, life and death no longer hold the line of distinction.” (Rickels) So we make it less human, demoralize the idea. I then think of how hard we try not to look like the dead, or the aging (for those who are aging are the same as those who are dying). This is definitely a reason behind the last century’s beauty products onslaught of “looking younger and thinner” by slathering creams on ourselves, loading makeup on our faces, wrinkle cream etc. Even hundreds of years ago people feared aging looks. Rickels, in describing the Hungarian countess Elisabeth Bathory, declares her a “psycho version of an inevitable shift from the direct hit of narcissism to its displacement, which runs on omnipotence of thoughts, the death wish, magic, technologization.” She bathed in the blood of virgins to look younger, and we object to such extremity now but can we really be the ones to talk? Women, and men too, now move fat from their ass to our lips, or get Botox injected into their face. Can we escape our fear of death if we do not look it? If we do not look ourselves can we somehow fool ourselves into not losing ourselves? Or maybe we do this as a simple evolutionary action. Perhaps when we reproduce we are leaving physical bits of us behind in the shells of children, like we never die. So looking ‘more attractive’ gets us a mate and then children. Thus continuing the energy of our self.
“The Vampire Lectures” speaks a lot on the act of mourning as a means of lessening the fears we hold. If we do not mourn, we cannot get over a death and therefore may become dead ourselves. Rickels brings up the movie ‘Psycho’ where the main character Norman loses himself and takes over his dead mother’s persona. I think this goes back into my idea of an energy exchange. Since Norman’s mother’s self is staying on this Earth, Norman’s self cannot.
“Mourning rituals pack a double dose of the ambivalence our unconscious is always picking up” says Rickels. It helps us more than anything else with our fear of the dead and death. We sometimes make it seem quaint, quiet, and respectful, such as an outdoor funeral. It is much less scary in this way. These rituals can also be seen as “defensive measures that must deliver us from their return.” Another defensive measure we automatically resort to is making excuses for the dead. When someone dies, we oftentimes mention how they smoked or drank for years, or that their health was bad, or that they were very old. If there are these reasons behind the death, then maybe they deserved to die in a way. Well, not deserved, but it makes it much less surprising if there are reasons and logic behind it. “One must by law find substitutes for what one cannot…have and hold…so all desire, all socialization, and so on will be based on substation and not on a direct hit or fit.” We mourn substitutes of they who have died, such as ashes, a grave, a picture, or their memory. This leads into idea that “whoever goes can be let go, can be put to rest, can be substituted for.” This feeds my own personal fear of death in that I do not want to be let go, as I see it as a form of being forgotten which is one of my greater dreads in dying.
So how do we become at peace with death? Well there is a Nobel Award winning question, if only I had the answer. I think that we need to first of all become aware of how we see death. Until this book and following lectures, I didn’t even know how I felt on the subject of death and dying. Now I have a much firmer grasp on what I think of death, and that I believe that when I die my ‘self’ or ‘other’ will be reincarnated somewhere. This is a very satisfying thought to me. It is very reassuring to have some belief in what will happen to me after death. This is why people who are a part of a religion seem to have less fear, because of their beliefs. With every religion comes where you go when you die, be it reincarnation, heaven, hell or something else entirely. With acceptance first comes awareness of what you do and do not believe in. “A century ago people would not have believed that we would be able to sit in our homes, watch a square box, and through it see a man land on the moon. There may well be another, spiritual world around us of which we are still unaware.” (Rickels) I think this view makes it very possible that there is somewhere for us to go. The other common solution is mourning, which has its place in getting over the death of another, but in my opinion not the death of our individual selves. It is much easier to deal with the mortality of others than our own. Mourning allows us to get over another’s death, so we do not embody it, but to get over our own we must accept that it will happen and decide what we think will happen and then just…well…live.

Thought Experimentation-Me, Myself and I

Blathering About the Whole Hiding-Behind-My-Words Business

My inspiration for this experimentation of thought does indeed force myself to become uncomfortable, analytical, and possibly a little self-critical. I am going to try and step out of my body as I write and notice the habits engrained within myself, particularly my ‘self’ that is exposed via writing. My inspiration comes not from the texts, although they too are a part of this investigation, but from a fellow peer’s blog in which he pointed out something I had not noticed which was in my own blog. The statement was: "I think I react this way because it is how it's socialized within us and our culture." My fellow blogger later said “An interesting thing happens in this statement; there is a shift from 'I' to 'we'. For those who clicked the link, and I hope you did because it's a good blog, you'll notice that the whole thing is written in that sort of 'we'ish fashion. The switch from 'I' to 'we' can be used to distance and protect oneself from the words. Anyway, these are old words and I'd rather not blather on about that whole hiding-behind-our-words business.”

Well, I am choosing to blather on about the “whole hiding behind our words” business. In fact, I will call it “Blathering about the whole hiding behind MY words business.” After re-reading this part of the blog, I actually started re-thinking my essay topic. Worries pop up in my head like “will everyone think this is cliché and trite? Will Tony think this is dumb and dull as dishwater? Am I dumb and dull as dishwater?!” You know what, I don’t give a damn. This is what I want to talk about. For once, I am going to try and focus on me, myself, and I and try not to worry about everyone else. I was shocked when I looked into my reaction to that sentence of the blog; where it went from worrying to what others will think of my topic, to specifically what the authority figure (in a matter of speaking I suppose) will think, to what everyone will think of me personally. As if I was defined by this paper or this topic. The fear of talking freely is even more deep rooted than I initially thought! If someone asked us FUCK if someone asked me if I thought I had the right to free speech I would say “well, obviously, read the constitution fool.” Yet so many of us FUCK yet I am not free in my speech.

To keep myself on track, I will record the utterance we FUCK I most often use in the case of mistakes. The ever risqué yet often used “Fuck.” It is a word that could inspire a whole book to itself, and I am sure it has (not the act, just the word itself), but that is not what I want to blather about right now. Possibly at a later time. Now that I have a blog, this is quite possible! I will put the word “Fuck” in capitols even, to make it more pronounced. I want to do this for two reasons. One, as I said, it will keep me on track of my goal to use more “I” terms and less “we” terms. Two, it is a fearful word to use in many cases for myself. We are afraid FUCK I am afraid of the judgment I undergo when I, a female with no particular grace in her step or hair like locks of gold, swear. I am not manly in any way really, but not particularly feminine all the time either. I am deeply afraid of the mixture of swear words and my personality, even though my true personality swears a shit ton. What are the connotations our society FUCK I put on swearing? I hide behind safe but jokingly near swear words like “frick” and “son of a mother!” so that any crowd can find me agreeable or of their lingo. I stretch myself out as far and broad as possible to satisfy as many people as possible, even those I dislike. No wonder I’m exhausted and have an identity crisis, I’ve been stretching myself thin to have everyone like me and agree with me instead of sticking to my guns and letting myself just be who I am. Hiding behind my words just continues this problem.

According to various sources, the general consensus seems to be that an ‘I-statement’ is a statement that begins with the word "I" (obviously) and “it is frequently used in an attempt to be assertive without putting the listener on the defensive.” Just as I suspected of myself. I do not want to be aggressive. I am afraid of being aggressive, or at lease being seen as aggressive since I care more about what others think of me than what I think of myself, as sad as that reality may be, it is my reality nonetheless, but I digress. Even when I feel aggressive, I do not want to be. Our society FUCK I hear the term “aggressive” and think of only negatives. The word “harsh” or “mean” comes to mind. Yet why do we FUCK I fear being aggressive? Sometimes it is completely necessary, even among friends. Debates (formal or informal) require aggressiveness to stay stimulating, sports need aggressiveness, hell chess needs aggressiveness. So many things in our FUCK my life require me to be aggressive in some form. Yet I do not become so. I cannot say I am not aggressive, I think we all are to some degree, but I am rarely outwardly aggressive. Even when I want or need to be. Even when it would go perfectly with the situation and who I am. Our FUCK my words can communicate so much of who we are FUCK I am, yet instead of using them as a tool or powerful means of finding myself (for lack of a much better term), a megaphone perhaps, I am using them as a rock to hide behind, to hide myself. I also see those words I suppress as a burden unto myself; a smaller rock I have in my hand that is annoying and weighing me down, but I am so afraid to drop it or throw it because I might accidently hit someone or something and become disagreeable to somebody (heaven forbid!) So I want to become more assertive in my words, in my thoughts, in my beliefs. I want to express me, not a passive possibility, not a “maybe that’s me,” but my true self. We shall FUCK I shall look unto the texts of J.L. Austin and Jacques Derrida for further exploration.

I love that Austin attacks what was at his time the belief in philosophy, how the main business of sentences is to state facts, and thus be true or false. Even though I know that we all know FUCK even though I know that sentences are not seen to be always about facts, many of my classes are, in fact (har dee har har), dominated by sentences of opinion and personal values, we FUCK I cannot get away from the feeling I need to back everything up. Either I need to have a bunch of pop culture quotes and references memorized, be crazy well read in the subject I’m talking about, or just have logical explanations for absolutely every idea and concept that comes out of my mouth. I tend to think out loud, thus why I talk a lot, and having clever explanations and quips or brilliant verifications and support for all that I say is simply impossible and unrealistic. This is where the “we” and “our society..” statements come in. They protect me from people’s disagreement or expectations of me. Speaking in these terms give us FUCK give me a loophole, an escape hatch in the conversation. It’s harder to disagree with these statements in the first place, and if one does, I can say something along the lines of “oh it’s not how my belief…” or “I’m just talking about society in general…” etc. I think I need to pay close attention to Austin’s conception of how “it was far too long… that the business of a ‘statement’ can only be to ‘describe’ some state of affairs, or ‘to state some fact,’ which it must do either truly or falsely.” I can say things without them having to be on either extreme; right or wrong, true or false.

Yet the idea of a speech act and that “the uttering of the words is usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act…the performance of which is also the object of the utterance, but it is far from being..the sole thing necessary if the act is to be deemed to have been performed” is what scares me. Austin brings up the saying “our word is our bond” and that “to say something is to do something.” What if I say something ‘wrong’ and someone who could have been one of the greatest people in my life judges me solely on that and what I’ve done with my words is scare them away and/or cause myself to be put into a labeled box? There is also the idea that we fear FUCK I fear that others will take what I say differently than I meant it and judge me on the fact, as I know (sadly) this is something I myself do.

Derrida Argues with Austin about illocutionary acts, and although I somewhat disagree with him on the idea that all communication in terms is traditionally reserved for writing, he has points that make me step out of my body, as I am trying to do here, and analyze myself in terms of MY communication. As I am doing this via writing, I feel I can still quote Derrida for this section.

Derrida says in the beginning of “Signature Events Context” how “It is certain that the word communication corresponds a concept that is unique, univocal, rigorously controllable, and transmittable: in a word, communicable?” We do not FUCK I do not want my word vomit to transmit disease unto others, or in other words, I do not want my word vomit to make me seem diseased. Is this even possible? If it was physical vomit I was spewing, everyone would tell me I was sick. I would know I was sick. Maybe all of us FUCK maybe I need to see my words not as vomit, but still communicable as a disease is. It goes along with how our class FUCK I see “Parasites” now. It does not need to solely turn up grotesque images of tape worms and the like; it can have positive connotations too. Instead of seeing my words as grotesque vomit people will always back away from, I need to see them as something those who listen will take and carry with them, either knowingly or unknowingly. From there, it may be isolated, but they could also pass it onto others. Other hosts of our FUCK my words. Who knows where some of my words are now; maybe they were the beginning of a huge chain that is hundreds or thousands of people long. Hell, why can’t I always think so optimistically?

One final idea I wanted to bring up was a concept we spoke about in class, from another Parasite. He pointed out that even in “I statements” we FUCK I hide. It was brought up that the statement “I feel” is less concrete than “I think,” and I know I tend to say “I feel” way more than “I think.” “I feel…” is safe. It is a safe statement of what we FUCK I am thinking. It doesn’t make us FUCK me feel as though we are FUCK I am pushing my views onto others. This way, they can’t push back. Newton’s third law states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If I state “I feel such and such…” it is very passive in a way, at least not particularly aggressive, and so the listener or reader or what have you cannot be aggressive either. They can technically, but the chances are significantly lowered. But where is the line drawn between I feel and I think? How do we differentiate a feeling from a thought? This is the last question I leave you with, reader of mine, as I still need to question and ponder it in my own life and words.

This thought experiment has gone off on many tangents, for which I will not be apologetic. I refuse to be apologetic after discovering how passive I can be in my writing! Time for some aggressiveness! These tangents are just evidence of how difficult it was for me to focus on my topic as well as my “I statements” and who I am when I write and even when I speak. Basically any way I communicate. This is what I wanted to accomplish, and experimentation of my words and how I use them. As Master Abraham said quite rightly in “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr:” "Very well! Let it all end in mad confusion!"

Seeking Intelligence Please

You know, after getting into The Tomcat Murr, I started to get a lot out of it. I am someone who always links things to my own life, and perhaps this is a little self-seeking but it’s how I stay interested in books, stories etc. I admit, it took me a bit to get into this very interestingly structured novel, as it was a strain on my brain (rhyme! Point for me. I love rhyming). We don’t even realize how much we are consumed by the norm of today’s society, the way we read things and the normalcies of our books etc. We may not think they are ‘normal,’ I for one read some weird shit, but they are all structured very similarly and tend to have a beginning, middle, and end and stick to the same viewpoint. Murr doesn’t do this, it has two spliced stories both of which are very different characters and times and from different viewpoints. Phew it most definitely takes some focus.

Any who, back to my point. If I ever have a point…I sometimes just ramble and hope a point sticks out somewhere in the mess of things. My copy of Murr is now full of ripped out scraps of paper where I wrote down quotes I liked and connected them to my own life or at least our own time. I think I will start cleaning out my book by ranting about at least on of these scraps.

An interesting quote Murr brings up somewhere near the beginning of the story says: "And so we've dismissed the intellectual capacity of the animal kingdom, which is often expressed in the most remarkable manner, by calling it instinct." I had never thought about this, how we do not often call our animals intelligent. Murr's first work is "Thought and Intuition: Cat and Dog." He too, even after deriding humans for doing this to animals, dismisses the intelligence of those he considers below him. I feel as if we do this even to other humans, not just animals, because we always need to feel above someone. We belittle those individuals we feel below us, we scrutinize them for something to mock, anything from how they walk to some manner of their speech. I've noticed how I hate this sometimes, even though I consider myself an easy target for mockery and actually welcome it in many cases (I possibly make fun of myself more than anyone else). Sometimes it just doesn't sit right with we, so I started thinking about those situations. I realized they tend to be those situations in which I am trying to show my intelligence by making a point or argument and all someone does is make fun of how many times I said "like" or how passionate I became with my hands etc. I'm expressing my comprehension, my savvy, my skill, my understanding and all my listener is doing is patronizing and attempting to demean me. I'm sure their motive is not consciously to feel above me, but why do we do this to each other sometimes, particularly in these moments? Murr is annoyed with man for looking down on the intelligence of animals but he does it to Ponto all the time and other animals. I am annoyed with certain individuals for doing this to me, but I know for a fact I do it right back. Why? Could I not possibly feel good about myself if I did not know how many others were below me? And why do I even keep saying that people ARE below me? Are we really above or below anyone else on the whole?


"Very well! Let it all end in mad confusion!" as Master Abraham said quite rightly. I think all my blog posts could end with this quote. Questions to me often lead to more confusion then clarity, but I ask anyways.

Sexuality. Eep.

Ah it is one of those days I never saw coming. The day I wrote a blog.

I admit the thought of blogging has flitted across my mind on more than one occasion. You may well learn that I like my opinions and observations to be heard (see: loud voice, bad habit of interrupting) so a blog fits these needs (well more-so wants) quite nicely. Still, I never thought the day would come. But here we stand, or sit eating chocolate eggs in my case.

I both love and hate the freedom we have been given on what we should blog about because I both love and hate having to think about what I'm going to write about. This class clearly leaves much to us, which is a rarity I feel. So I choose to delve more into the ideas of sexuality, and taboos in general, we discussed in class in the context of "Shivers" as well as some ideas brought about by JL Austin in "How To Do Things With Words." Hardly creative as these were the two pieces of media we have been told to view this first week but so sue me. Hopefully my words and opinions will show a little more originality.

I have been trying to get through Austin's lecture compilation with some difficulty, even though he states "What I would like to say here is neither difficult nor contentious" I thought it was very difficult to understand for some reason, although most definitely not contentious for after making sense of it I had no quarrel to what Austin was saying. I love the idea that speech in itself is a form of action and that a sentence "is used in making a statement" versus the idea that "a sentence ever is a statement."This idea brought up the concept of taboos in my mind and why they are taboos. Our society has gone through many phases of taboos, from women showing their knees (the audacity!) to homosexuality to just simple sexuality now. We got through the knee flashing and even to a large degree the idea of homosexuality, if you compare it to say the 1950's. I know that everyone I have met here either is not straight, has bi/gay friends, or is ok with the idea. I am obviously aware that many are not, but even those who are less ok with it are more tolerant than years past. My hypothesis has been that this is due to more exposure. More articles, speeches, etc. brought about the action of making it a more familiar concept and therefore normalized to some degree.

Sexuality, sensuality and pleasure itself are scarier and more risque to us than movies where a character's head is blown away. There is so much shame involved with these ideas, and since we do not talk about it, there is no action. Speaking more on it leads to disintegrating the tabboos surronding sexuality. In movies we feel perfectly comfortable with characters talking about boning, boinging, doing someone and scenes where the characters are making out then it fades to black, clearly to show they had sex. Even under the cover fooling around, where the action is obvious, we feel ok with and may get mere PG-13 or possibly R rating. But how weird would you feel with a woman masturbating, simply pleasuring herself? Or watching people orgasm? Or any other evidence that humans are sexual creatures who like to feel pleasure?

I return to Austin's first lecture, where he speaks of how at first "came the view.... that a statement ought to be verifiable, and this led to the view that many 'statements' are only what may be called pseudo-statements." So in some people's eyes I cannot make a statement that is not verifiable? Am I not allowed to voice what I believe to be true, even if others do not? Maybe others do not share my view that sexuality needs to be a more open topic. No, not maybe, DEFINITELY. I give you my whole dorm freshman year (substance free and stereotypically enough overtly religious) or my grandparents, who actually had looks of horrific shock upon learning I watched Brokeback Mountain. And no, I did not say sex I said sexuality. We see sex well enough and have come to an age where a sex scene doesn't send us away twittering and giggling. I mean true sexuality, sensuality, and the idea of pleasure.

So what would come from eradicating the taboos around sex and sexuality? Well I don't think we would be as embarrassed to talk about them for one, even typing some of these things I wonder how people will feel or see me. Better communication on these topics would lead to better sex between partners due to more communication and less embarrassment, better sexual education that covers all the ground not just "if you have sex you will get pregnant and die...now take some rubbers" ala "Mean Girls." There would be confused teenagers less afraid to ask questions of real resources, not just Cosmopolitan (which actually gives the advice to use a Peachy-O as a cock ring, just throwing that out there....) or their friends who think pulling out is a method of birth control. And imagine how much less shame we would feel! Asking questions wouldn't be shameful, pleasuring one's self wouldn't be shameful, heck maybe even having the "talk" with our parental units would be less shameful.

So basically I think we need to take ideas from both "Shivers" and Austin. Remember how weirded out you felt by "Shivers" and take a moment to think why (ignoring the more gruesome parasite scenes). Then think about how Austin believe that speech is action. Talking more about sex and our own sexuality as human beings is the only way to make it less taboo and more open.

Sexuality is a quality we all share, it is one of the few universal qualities in this entire messed up world and I think we need to feel much more free about that. As the nurse said in "Shivers;" "Everything is sexual...everything is erotic..."

Fin.