I Regret Something, Someone, Somewhere

I sometimes get stuck on a thought or concept that I can't let go of. A recent one that has concerned me is regrets. My two favorite quotes on regret are "Fuck it all and fucking no regrets," from Metallica, and "I once thought it mattered to regret / things that I have done and haven't / sometimes you've got to be wrong and learn from mistakes," from Dream Theater. They're pretty cliche when I think about it, as both pretty much say, "I regret nothing."

The usual argument that concerns regret goes a little something like: If regret something, you have to realize that those mistakes or missed opportunities make you who you are, and you wouldn't be who you are and where you are today if it wasn't for those choices you have made. It's a nice piece of logic, but there are two things that are missing, gaps in the logic that make such rhetoric difficult to justify. The first is that it assumes you are 100% happy with your current position in life. The second assumes (by inference) that you can actually change the choice you have made.

Let's start with the first. Is anyone happy with their current state in life? Unless you are Pollyanna or a complete euphoric, there are some thorns in your ass in life. Since regrets concern missed opportunities or mistakes, we are dealing with choices. The problem with today's society and why so many of us are depressed is that we put too much importance on happiness. It is as if we made all the right choices, met all the right people, married the right person, went to the right school, got the right job, then we'd be happy in life. Some of us are content in life, as in we won't complain much, but no one is 100% happy. Therefore, we can all admit we don't like some choices we have made.

The second fault in the above statement is that it infers that we can actually change the past, or, at the very least, that if we could change the past we would. Well, the problem with that is that we cannot change the past, period, the end. Changing the past is simply a complete violation of the laws of nature, so forget hypotheticals, because it cannot happen. So, if we all have choices we don't like, and we cannot change them, then what is so wrong with having regrets?

If I may use a personal example, I regret ever starting to smoke cigarettes. It is a filthy habit that I cannot seem to kick. I did quit for a couple of months about a year ago. Subsequently I gained about 35 pounds, and I could not seem to think the way I usually do. The latter concerned me more, because that's what I love to do: research, accumulate and synthesize information, and formulate hypotheses and conjectures; it's about the only thing I'm good at. Needless to say, I started smoking again, and I have little desire to kick the habit again. But I regret ever starting at all. So I must ask: what is wrong with regret?

I regret turning down my invitation to attend the SC Governor's School of the Arts 2-year program. I regret not making love to certain girls. I regret certain things I've said that have burned personal bridges. I regret loosing touch with an old friend from high school. But there is nothing I can do to change any of this, nor can any of us change anything we've ever done. As long as we don't regret our entire lives, what exactly is wrong with having regrets? It can be a paralyzing thing, and it can be a motivator, just like certain mind altering drugs or facing your fears.

To me, it seems that regret is absolutely an okay thing to have, if not completely healthy and appropriate. It seems that somewhere someone came up with the aforementioned argument and it has become a cliche; a stale cliche at that.

"This is the regret that you. This is the regret that you make and the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something. Give me a cigarette. Mistakes like this you don't make. Some you make and okay. Not okay, something, you make other ones. Know that you should do better. The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret. Oh, and I'll die, and I'll tell you what, the biggest regret of my life is I let my love go. What did I do? And I'm ashamed. A million years ago, the fucking regret and guilt, these things, don't ever let anyone ever say to you you shouldn't regret. Don't do that. Don't! You regret what you fucking want! Use that. Use that. Use that regret for anything, any way you want. You can use it, okay?"
~Earl, Magnolia

The Sacred and The Fun

Recently I took part in a discussion with some fellow Putty Club members on one of the member's PhD dissertation, David Thompson, which was on, in simplistic terms, on what makes a place fun. He explained to us that fun is essentially a mechanism by which we deal with uncertainties. He also elaborated on play being "the is that isn't an is," or "the bite that isn't a bite." Put another way, by example, play is like a toy gun, which is a gun that isn't a gun. This was over a month ago, so I have had some time to contemplate these ideas. So let me try and simplify these, and hopefully do Dr. David's dissertation some justice, and work these ideas into some stuff I have been working on.

Fun as a mechanism against uncertainty: We live in uncertain times, that's for sure. Most people I know who have recently graduated from college are not working in their fields of study. A fashion design major working as a social worker; an architecture major working as a pizza chef; an electrical engineer working security; a nutritional scientist working as a bartender - these are all real examples of people I know. And it's not just the job market, it's the economy, housing, the future of internet, whether the US will swing socialist or fascist, et cetera. And how do we deal with these things? By various mechanisms that allow us to escape or cope with these uncertain times. These mechanisms may be drugs, nihilism, reborn Christian, protesting, or just straight-up fun.

David illustrated to us that the Arab Springs, OWS, the Tea Party, and Zombie Walks are all the same thing, the same movement. They are expressions of discontent with the current status quo, and Zombie Walks are a fun expression of discontent with uncertainties.

The is that isn't an is: If something is what it isn't, isn't that a metaphor? I've discussed play and fun with another fellow of Putty Club, Scott Sworts, and we both agree that play is a metaphor. Because John Doe runs fast, John is the wind. John Doe clearly isn't the wind, but he is the is that isn't the is. That's what metaphors are. Metaphors are expressions of complex ideas that have no concrete foundation for the idea in reality, and these abstract concepts are expressed in concrete notions that do exist, but they are what they are not. Lakoff discusses metaphors as such. To use a Lakoff example, love is a complex concept that is difficult to express, so it is expressed in concrete terms. We treat love as a container that we can be in and out of. "I am in love," "She has fallen out of love with Jim," et cetera. We also express love as physical chemistry: "They have chemistry," "He sparked when he met her," "There is friction between them," you get the point. It is the is that isn't an is. Zombie Walks are the dead that aren't dead. In a way, zombies are the dead that aren't dead.

These concepts parallel to what I have been working with: the sacred. I have yet to actual expel upon what I mean by the "sacred" in previous posts, so I will try to detail it here (apologies for previous vagueness). The sacred can be defined as an idea of authenticity, which is invoked due to a desire for authenticity. Why is the sacred concerned with authenticity? Because profane reality, profane time and space, is inauthentic; it is just copies of copies of copies of... To use a quasi-fallacious example, take a signature, which is supposed to be a demarcation of authenticity. How do we know a signature is authentic? We compare to other signatures. The signature is little more than a copy of a copy of a copy...

While that example may be considered a straw-man fallacy out of context, I will use Thomas Mann to clarify. In Joseph and His Brothers, Mann begins the tome with "Deep is the well of the past, should we not call it bottomless?" We can never be certain about the truth of the past. Ancient history might as well be considered speculative conjectures outside of written accounts. Even with written accounts we can never be certain of whether or not these accounts are given truthfully; is not history written by the victors? And is not ancient history written mythically as legends? So everything, even history, is uncertain and lacking objective authenticity.

When the sacred is invoked, usually in rituals and ceremonies (i.e. prayer, Mass, magic, pageants) are various forms of retelling or recreating the beginning; the beginning of time and creation. This is the most authentic point in reality, according to Eliade, as creation is fresh and uncorrupted. Creation is the point of origin, and the origin is the point from which all other things emanate; like the center of a circle, whereby the circumference may be drawn. Even in contemporary science we are confronted with myths on creation: equations, computer simulations, quantum probabilities, and theories that tell us how it all went down at the beginning. Our scientific knowledge of the beginning is just as inauthentic as Genesis when the face of God moved across the waters. This is why the sacred is invoked, so that the desire for the authentic might be expressed, thus created a break from profane, unauthentic reality.

By recreating or retelling myths of creation in some form or another we invoke the sacred. The opening of Masonic lodges is a recreation of the the beginning, as is Catholic Mass, or the preparation for an alchemical operation, or a baptism. These are all done with metaphors and as metaphors, because all a myth is, according to Roland Barthes, is a meta-language of truths that overlay the falsities of the spoken word. A myth is the falsehood that isn't false. On a very literal level the myth may be contradictory or flat-out false, but metaphorically they express truths, truths that are ideas of authenticity.

Myths are filled with ideologies, because ideologies are always something that tries to expel uncertainties. But, as Amparo in Foucault's Pendulum says, "It's an ideal principle, which can be verified only under ideal conditions. Which means never. But it's still true." Ideologies are just inauthentic as anything else, as are myths, and the sacred. What differentiates them is that they are a desire for something authentic.

But why is the sacred so special that it claims authenticity? How is religious institution any different from profane, cultural institution? Religion is a cultural institution, but it lays claim to unquestionable truths and authentic perceptions (this doesn't mean it is any more authentic than conspiracy theories, which is why it is a desire for the authentic, without actually being authentic). You can challenge and question the US Constitution because it is a profane cultural myth. You cannot question the Bible, a religious myth. It is possible to be a homosexual American. It isn't (supposed) to be possible to be a homosexual Christian. This is because you aren't supposed to change the Bible, but you can change the US law. Culture is simply a safeguard against whimsical changes that threaten customs, norms, and traditions.

Why is the invoking of the sacred a mechanism for dealing with reality? Well, just look at America after 9-11. Americans turned to God and church for consolation. Who turned to fun after 9-11? Were zombies the primary form of coping with uncertain times of terrorist threats? No. We sought the authentic by turning to God, Church, and mix it Country.

What ultimately differentiates the mechanism of invoking the sacred from the mechanism of fun is the sacred is an expression of authenticity against profane reality, while fun is an expression of dealing with uncertainties.  Fun and play challenge and express discontent toward uncertainties. The sacred expresses an idea of authenticity. They're not the same thing, but they parallel as mechanisms for coping with reality.

Spooky

I have discussed elsewhere before the subject of magic and spiritual rituals as being "all in our heads." I will reiterate this idea: no things have a natural or inherited magical aspects, and those aspects are given to these things by our association with it. So, for instance, a pentagram is just five lines (literally means "five lines"), and it has no inherent or magical properties, except those we place upon it. The Pyramids of Giza are meaningless shapes, and the only power they have is the power we give them. These things naturally mean nothing. All the power and all the meaning in the world spawns from our own minds. In other words, we possess all the power and meaning we give the ordinary things that surround us.

I have spent a considerable amount of time lately contemplating what makes a place sacred. Is it ritual? Is it geometry? Is it a historical event, such as the burial place of Jesus Christ? Clearly we make places sacred, but how we make them sacred is variable. These places and things are only sacred by our own making. This is how Eliade delineates between the sacred and the profane. He illustrates that a rock is just a rock (profane), but can be made sacred by ritualized time and space (i.e. breaking from ordinary, profane time and space into an idea of authentic reality). So the rock in the Dome of the Rock is just a rock; nothing more. It is by myth and ritual that it becomes something more than just any old rock.

Recently I have revisited H.P. Lovecraft and I realized I was dealing with in Lovecraft the exact opposite of what I was contemplating with the sacred. Lovecraft take ordinary things, like his infamous New England settings, and turns them into terrifying, unholy, settings of unknown horrors. How does he do this? By taking ordinary things and transforming them through the meanings and association we possess in our heads.

Now, for Lovecraft, he focuses on New England, because that is where he lived, but this transformation into horrors and nightmares can be executed in any setting. Think of it as how Dante makes us think of who we might know and where they might be in Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. In Dante's Divine Comedy, he places contemporaries of his in different layers of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; people who were well known, simple people he knew, mythic characters (such as Odysseus), and historical figures (such as Plato and Virgil). He does this so we might also think who we know and their placements in the afterlife. Just as Dante using primarily folks from Florence, his home town, Lovecraft uses New England. In a way, Lovecraft is encouraging us to think of where we live and how those places might hold occult, shadowy horrors. I for one can imagine horrors that lie hidden in small, country towns on desolate roads I have traveled in South Carolina.

I had not read much Lovecraft when I first moved to New England, and even then, New England towns seemed simply old, quaint, and charming. After living in New England for over a year I read more Lovecraft and suddenly found these towns I would take a train through to hold some dark secret. Obviously Lovecraft had an influence on me.

Like the sacred, Lovecraft uses certain realistic devices to create terrifying elements, often obscure and unknown traits, descriptions of foul odors, looming shadows, indescribable (often higher dimensional) geometries, mysterious sounds, and vague descriptions of cryptozoological creatures. What makes most of his creatures scary is not that they have many eyes, or no eyes, blobs, tentacles, slimy, bad smelling horrors. What makes them terrifying is that they are often creatures of some advanced race of earth spawned organisms, elder deities, or from outer space, and that they have the potential to destroy the human race, but don't care to. They use the humans when they see fit, often because some humans want their help, but generally they want nothing to do with us.

Why is that scary? Nothing is more terrifying than entities that don't want anything to do with humans. They're non-anthropomorphic, and we are anthropocentric. We can identify with Satan because he's trying to take us down with him. We can identify with evil gods, because they want to destroy humanity. But something that can destroy us, but is completely ambivalent toward us, that's even scarier simply because we cannot relate to them.

Lovecraft's universe is ultimately festering with human-ambivalent creatures, multi-dimensional places, dark planets, and wicked deities, and their interacting with ordinary places and things like quaint New England. He proposes a universe, not of wonder, but of unknown horrors beyond comprehension. Often protagonists in his stories are not trying to save the world from evil, but struggling to save their own sanity, and they often lose.

This post is not really meant to explain anything, but, rather, to explore the mental transformation of the ordinary into something sacred or unholy. Ultimately, the only difference between the sacred and unholy is with the unholy we who experience it are overwhelmed with paranoia.

Questioning Atheism

I have a problem with Christians primarily for one reason: their unquestioning faith in whatever is verbally fed to them by their church. Faith, I think, is a good thing at times. Faith is not necessarily synonymous with "belief." Belief, as I have defined it for myself, is "asserting as truth without any significant evidence, proof, or logic to verify as truth." Faith, on the other hand, is simply a desire for something to become truth. For instance, I have faith that if I do well, work hard, and really try, I can make something of my life that I will be proud of. Someone else may have faith that their child will grow up to be brilliant and successful. Someone else may have faith that they will not get fired from a job.

So faith isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, unquestioning faith, that is something else entirely. It can be dangerous, and is usually a sign the utmost ignorance, or, at least, someone who doesn't use their brain. What stems from my disgust towards many (not all) Christians, is that they never question their doctrine or scripture. How can one understand anything if they don't question it? For instance, God created the world in six days, then rested on the seventh. But God is, according to doctrine, omnipotent, that is all-powerful and can do anything. So why did God rest on the seventh day? Did he get tired or something? That may be blasphemy to most Christians, but as a mystic I find it a very important question to ask if anyone is to understand the uniquely Abrahamic idea of the God on Most High.

Or again in Genesis, "the face of God moved above the waters," and then God separated everything. The waters are the primordial waters of chaos, which holds all things in perfect state of war, conflict, and contradictions. That means that God could not have been the only thing, but existed simultaneously with chaos and matter. It also means God did not created anything. Chaos is only potential to become other things, so God separated the conflicting elements of chaos into an ordered state of water and chaos, light and dark, land and sea, night and day, animate and inanimate, et cetera. So why is God called the Creator, if He didn't create, but ordered? Can anything be created ex nobo? Or is all creation a form of ordering?

These questions and more are the foundations of many of the Western world's philosophies, and they get at an idea and desire of authenticity that is greater than the profane world we live in every day. If we ignore these questions we are just as lost as someone who never picked up a sacred text in their life.

To clarify my point here, I think most Christians, and many other devoutly religious people, have simply missed the point (again, this doesn't not mean all of them). But if Christians missed the point, then clearly atheists didn't know there was a point to begin with.

Atheists, really, are just as bad as Christians. Christians will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda, and Atheists will skip over things in the Bible that don't fit their agenda either. Atheists love to pull the comment: you don't need the Bible to have morality. And you know what, they're right; you don't need the Bible to find morality, at least not anymore. But ask any Atheist if there is anything moral in the Bible and most of them will pull out all the horrible things the Bible recommends to do, such as if a man rapes a woman, then they have to marry. They are clearly skipping over the moral parts of the Bible to fit their own agenda. (Again, not all atheists do this).

What astounds me the most about Atheists is their rejection of a desire for the authentic, the subliminal experience. There are always going to be a few moments in our lives where we simply don't have words, and we sense something much larger than ourselves. We may call this "something larger than ourselves" Deity, the Universe, the All, Nature, or whatever. We may experience this in viewing Venus, watching the sun set, seeing a child born, solving a math problem, growing a sugar crystal, or watching a snake eat a rat. It is a sense of wonder; it is ineffable; in it we feel small and lost in complexity and contradiction. We try to understand these experiences, and this is our desire for the authentic. Atheists may get excited about it, but then they like to pass it off to science to figure it out, whatever it is that needs to be figured out. That, or they find it silly to think there might be something higher than us just by watching water freeze.

I ultimately find it tragic that one side fights over a point that they missed, and the other fights over a point they didn't know was there. And I see this everyday, and both sides are only persecuting themselves. Christians say, "I won't apologize for being Christian!" "Those immoral, liberal atheists are trying to destroy our religion!" Then Atheists say, "The Christians are trying to destroy us!" "I won't apologize for being an Atheist!" Right, and while you're both putting yourselves up on your crosses, you self-fulfill your own persecution.

I just wish Christians would try to question and understand their own doctrines, and Atheists try to understand Christianity and Christians as two separate things. But above all, if I may quote Rodney King, "I wish we could all just get along."

What if America Falls? So What?

I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the Fall of America. It isn't a question of if, it's a question when. To most, the Fall of America is terrifying prospect, and most wouldn't want it to happen in their lifetime. I personally don't care. Sure, I've thought I would run, but to where? Canada? Mexico? India? China? Even if the collapse of America doesn't effect other countries, which it will, what about running will make it easier? Move into the woods? I would love to do that; you know, hunt and grow my own food, build a little hut, sit by a fire, and other romantic ideas about living in the wilderness. But the likelihood is I would die in about a year from some disease or another.

But really, what is wrong with being the guy who just wants to watch the world burn? I mean, if you didn't start the fire, what's wrong with watching it all burn? It's not like I'm praying for the Apocalypse, like some Evangelicals do.

Since I was in high school I have said to myself that I want to be awake and conscious when I die. I don't want to pass peacefully in my sleep, nor shot in the head; I want to know I'm dying. Why so morbid? you might ask. Well, you only get to die once, so might as well get to experience the only time you're going to die. I didn't have enough synaptic connects when I was born to remember it, and you're only born once. So I would like to know I'm dying.

Likewise, empires only fall every couple of centuries or so. What's wrong with wanting to see an empire fall? Supernovas don't happen often in our little corner of the galaxy, nor do they happen enough so we can see them without a telescope. The last one was 600 years ago. I would have loved to have seen that. But supernovas are the aftermath of a dying star, when the star runs out of nuclear fuel and blows off most of its mass in a giant explosion.

Seeing a supernova in our proximity without a telescope is rarer than the fall of an empire. Yes, I understand it will suck to live through the Fall of America, but what a rare experience that is, though not a heavily envied experience. I'm sure no one wants to go back in time and experience the Fall of the Roman Empire. But none the less, rare things are always valuable.

Let me clarify though that in no way do I welcome the end of empire. I welcome it about as much as seeing an asteroid hit the earth creating a mass extinction, and those are pretty rare (they happen about every 27 million years). But the rarity of such events make me want to hang around for them when they happen. All things have an ending, so if the ending comes, I just want to hang around just to see what it's like. But it does give me some comfort to know that this is the way things happen. Buildings burn. People die. Empires fall. Understanding the nature of things makes them less disturbing, and easier to embrace the inevitable ending of all things. We're supposed to lose the things we love, or how else would we appreciate them. You know that old saying, "You don't know what you have until it's gone." Well, when you think about, it sounds less like advice, and more like prophecy.

"Why should I lament the disappearance of my people? All things die."
~Chief Seattle

The Freedom of being Homeless

I was thinking about a particular line from Fight Club, one of the lines I consider the most important:

"Goddammit, an entire generation waiting tables, pumping gas, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working shit jobs we hate so we buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We have all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we are very, very pissed off."

In the spirit of Eric Fromm I would like to illustrate how enslaved we really are, and just how the freedoms we think we have are really social constraints, balls-and-chains, and boundaries that give us the illusion of happiness. Are we as free as we think we are? Albert Pike said, and I paraphrase, that difficult freedom is far superior to comfortable enslavement, which has been said many different ways by other people, but the same concept. Ben Franklin said, and I paraphrase again, "Those who would give up a little freedom for a little security have neither, nor do they deserve either."

So think about how comfortable you are. Seriously, think about. We are all quite comfortable in the first world. In fact, we are so comfortable that we have to make up problems (first world problems) in order to feel like we have some sort of strife to confront. But that strife is usually taken care of with absolute ease with a swipe of a piece of plastic in your wallet that has imaginary points of credit on it, which we think has value, and we just can't seem to desire more of these imaginary points. And if you run out of points, well, luckily for all of us, we can use imaginary points that we don't have and promise to pay back later!

And when we really think about it, all those comforts are really shackles and chains, an invisible prison. We have homes that give us boundaries, which we have mortgages that we have to pay so we can live in these boundaries; and, even if we don't have a mortgage anymore, we still have a coercion tax, called a property tax, that we pay to the government for protection against the Indians. And to pay for this and other things we work "shit jobs we hate," where we answer to a monarch known as "the boss" and sit in little 8 foot by 8 foot windowless prisons all day, all the while shackled to a desk by a computer. And just so we can stay chained to these prisons, we made the prison boundless with the advent of smart phones and tablets! Now the desk we are chained to is imaginary and mobile.

But, oh! the freedom of being able to do work at my local coffee shop! Yes, yes, slave, what freedom you have. You replaced a 9-to-5 prison for a 24 hour prison. And what else we consider freedom that is actually little more than enslavement? Going skiing in Aspen sounds like freedom; you get away, feel the cold wind on your face while racing down a freaking mountain, and afterward go for some hot cocoa spiked with some whiskey... yes, yes, slave, it is freedom. "Advertisements has us chasing a thousands of dollars in skis, Northface outfits, Oakley sunglasses, hotel lodgings, dinning out, and bar tabs." Even if you can't afford it, just use your imaginary points, so you stay chained to the bank. Half the fun stuff we do is little more than social activities that are considered acceptable, so now you're chained to what society thinks is okay to do.

Okay, so you've gotten the point. But I have to ask, are people who have none of these liberated? I think so, and the homeless are the best example, at least those who don't do drugs (yes, they do exist, and I've met several of them). One might argue, "Hey dumbass, don't those people, you know, depend on the change I give them as I leave the Starbucks with my double-chai-latte-mochiato? Don't they depend on Salvation Army and soup kitchens? Aren't they enslaved to those things?" Why, yes, they are, to be frank.

But then again, are they really tied to all that much? They aren't tied to the bank because they had to run up their credit card debt to get the new IPad and a shopping spree at Ikea. They aren't tied to a place. Hell, they travel more than most people. I met a homeless woman once in Boston who told me she had been to South America, Mexico, Canada, and to almost every major city in the Continental United States. She more traveled than me, but then again, she doesn't need an airplane, hotel rooms, or a schedule. They aren't tied to jobs, clients, mortgages, or anything else that keeps most of us in an office working "shit jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need."

I rather admire homeless people. I mean sure a good number of them stink, and some of them are crazy, and a lot are addicted to drugs (not that most of America isn't addicted to some pharmaceutical or another). But for the most part, homeless people are interesting. They usually have cool stories, which they love to tell because they usually only get to talk to other homeless people. They know the system that governs our imaginary prisons we call society, and they know how to exploit it. One homeless man I met in Boston told me that most homeless people own a nice pair of clothes, if not a suit. He said that when he really needed some good food and a nice place to sleep he would put it on and go into a hotel unsuspectingly. Go into a ladies room, since they have a couch, lock the door and get a few hours of comfortable rest (this is actually so common that Law and Order talked about it once). And sometimes in the hotel or somewhere nearby is going to be fancy food someone didn't eat. I was astonished how well this guy knew how to get by.

Sure, they're lives are difficult. But at least they have real problems, and even in the face of those problems, they could really care less. What is it for most of us to not have a bite to eat for a day? For most of us, that's a big deal. To most homeless people, who cares? It's easier to get laid than find food sometimes, so might as well go score (yes, homeless people have rules and systems for dating and casual sex, much like the rest of society).

In short, we are all slaves. But I must admit, the homeless have a much longer and fragile ball-and-chain than the rest of us. Want to know the taste of real freedom, go find some real problems. As for me, I prefer to be a realist, no matter if I'm a slave or not.

The Danger of Movies

Really all movies are are stories; myths, if you will. And yet, I feel that the danger of movies is not the danger we would typically think of movies having. The danger of a film, or of any story, is that we will misconstrue them, misunderstand and misinterpret them.

Martin Heidegger talks about our relationship with technology, if we are to have a free relationship with it, we must understand the essence of technology. The danger of technology is that we might misunderstand or misconstrue the essence of technology. That works for anything, and in particular pop culture, which can tell us the most about ourselves. If we miss the essence of the movie or TV show, then that is the most dangerous thing about a film. The content is not dangerous, but the misrepresented essence of the myth.

Take for instance a classic like Fight Club. I think Fight Club is probably one of the most important movies of my generation, because it is not only a critique of our lifestyles, it is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) works of art that tell us who we are as a culture.

Most of us like Fight Club because of witty lines that we like to repeat amongst our friends. "You're not your fucking khakis." "You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake." "This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time." "I wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn't screw to save its species." You know all the commonly quoted lines. We like to see the fighting and sex scenes. But this is the danger of Fight Club, not because of cursing, violence, and sex, but that is all we usually think of the movie as and as little more than that.

One of the most important lines from Fight Club, I think, is, "Goddammit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; working shit jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We were all told that one day we'd be millionaires, movies gods, and rock-stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact, and we are very pissed off." Because that is what our generic lifestyles have turned into. Not culture, not spiritual way of life, but a mediocre lifestyle mass marketed and sold to us in stylish packaging of individuality of choice. Pick a job, pick a family, then pick all the pointless crap you have options of buying. The only way these men could have a spiritual experience was to say "fuck it," take their shirts off, forget their image, forget who they are ("Fuck what you know, forget what you think you know about life, friendship, and especially about you and me."), and then proceed to engage in mental state of primal fear as they beat the shit out each other. It is raw, primitive, animalistic, but it was the only way for them to have a real experience. Not to experience something that was prepackaged as brand and mass marketed to them. They had to forget everything and beat each other senseless in order to escape generica and have a true, real, spiritual experience. And in actuality, that might be the only way for any of us to have a real spiritual experience anymore. Even something as sacred as church, yoga, mass prayer, meditation, et cetera is a mass marketed, generic experience of salvation and "awakening."

Take another movie, A Day Without A Mexican. It's generally popular because it's funny to get a glimpse of what our world would be like without Mexicans. Of course, there's the danger; the director had a vision, and a good one I might add, and we missed the point because the movie was funny. The point of A Day Without A Mexican is about being Mexican, and being Mexican is not ethnic, it's cultural. "You belong to the people who taught you the world... My heart is Mexican." BAM! Right there is the whole movie! But it gets misconstrued or lost entirely.

A final example that is very dear to me is the TV show Lost. Many people didn't like it, just because of the ending. Because apparently how something ends is the most important thing, like, ever! If I may modify a Mitch Hedberg joke: I hated that apple because it turned out to be a core! But we confuse the story for the point of the story. The show Lost had a very vital message that, ironically, gets lost. The point was everyone's relationships to each other; how they met, how they got along, or how they fought; how their lives were entangled, how they lived together. At the very end of the show Christian Sheppard says, "The most important thing in your life was the time you spent with these people." That's because that is the most important thing for us. Like Fight Club, our lives are shallow and empty because the things we own end up owning us. It doesn't matter that your life turned out this way or that way, nor does it matter how much we try to change it. It doesn't matter if we lose this stuff or are left with nothing. The most important thing is the people we share our brief time with in life.

That message gets lost in the show because we're too shallow when it comes to storytelling. We want storytelling to be as generic as The Little Mermaid, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And isn't that the point of Fight Club? If you can't grasp the experience by forgetting all the other distractions in the story, then you aren't meant to have the experience. You can't have the experience of something greater than yourself if you aren't willing to take some punches to the face.

The ultimate danger is that in missing the essence of film, our modern day form of storytelling, is that we will never understand ourselves. If pop culture can tells us more about who we are than any other medium, then misunderstanding that means we will be lost in generica, forever mass marketed how we should live, feel, and consume as human beings in an illusory democracy of pointless choices.

Pick your poison, because consumption of brands is the only religious experience we have left.