On my way to work, during my 90 second commute, I was pondering the trend in movies and books that pits humanity against various external foes or enemies; aliens, demons, etc. And I just have to say that what struck me was the way we, as a global culture and society, seem to absolutely love those good versus evil scenarios with humanity as the underdog good guys, persecuted and executed by random bad guys, usually completely different life forms...and when I look around at the lifestyle of destruction we all live in, I noticed that I don't see any external bad guys...I only see us, destroying ourselves. This thought pops into my head as I drive past the enormous billboard outside of Warner Bros. studios for the upcoming Terminator film and I also see random posters up for Angels and Demons, opening soon...more external bad guys.
And I'm telling you, it's not machines or demons that are tearing this planet apart and reaping atrocities upon us too disgusting to contemplate...it's humanity itself. Every morning you can easily find headlines to support this; babies tossed out of moving cars, bombs dropped, women raped, children kidnapped, soldiers tortured...no evil machines there, no planet hopping aliens...just us, mutilating ourselves.
I'm not sure if the storytelling device of externalizing these tendencies is a healthy form of living vicariously so as to feel some sense of power and victory over our own darkness, or if it's just distancing us from the truth of the situation...which is that no one is fucking this up for us, we're doing it quite nicely for ourselves.
This also led me to ponder the nature of truth and whether it's even possible for there to be a "truth" and what that would imply...but I think that's fit for another blog.
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