The darker side of nonsense…
Yeah, so I ripped that title off of a 4 year old nu-metal album. Sue me.
This post isn’t the standard fair of mocking whatever I find dumb (and leaving plenty of holes in the argument while doing so; see previous rant for a shining example). It’s not a shitty daily analysis blog post, nor is it a political rant.
So what the bloody hell is it, you ask? Read on…
People have this wonderful ability to shut themselves off from reality. And while it’s fun for short periods of time, living your life while doing so is a horrible waste. These are the people who ask “why do we have to fight?” during wartime, in some pitiful attempt to sound deep and thought provoking. They’re the ones who cry in horror when tragedy strikes, like it was something unfathomable. They’re the ones who refuse to entertain the thought of any of the less desirable things in life, and they’re the ones who turn to religion, astrology, or any number of crap ways to find meaning.
Then there’s the opposite: Those who don’t turn to overbearing father-figure for answers (which people who do don’t get anyways, but seem to enjoy pretending to), who aren’t affected in the least by the pain and suffering of the world despite paying attention to it, and who are more likely to think of something wretched than of something good.
Being a part of the latter I’d love to think it’s better, and I do, for the most part. But at a certain point you begin to wonder if it’s healthy. I think it depends on the person, so let’s take me as an example: I began to disown my religion (Christianity; could be worse I guess, at least I wasn’t raised Mormon) around 14, and I saw my first picture of real, graphic violence when I was about the same age. I saw more in the week following (by my own consent, and not that of some jackass in a comp lab), and it shocked me. I think that was the last time I ever felt “shook up” by something… Three years later, in the spring of last year, one of my friends (Keith; there, happy?) who frequents totse discovered gore videos. It was a post that pretty much listed off links to the most horrible things you can think of: Impalement, animal cruelty, children being destroyed in Africa, shootings, cooked babies (ok, some of these were fake) and finally, beheadings. After about a day of damn near begging me to watch one of the beheadings, I finally did. It shows, from start to end, the decapitation of a Russian prisoner by a group of Chechyen rebels. And my reaction? Hmm, looks like an animal being slaughtered. That, and “oh, so blood doesn’t so much shoot out of the neck as it ‘flows’ from it” (that would be the filmmaker part of my brain). After watching it all a couple more times, I worked up the courage to download the other one a couple weeks later. It had sound. Actually, it’s probably one of the more infamous clips on the internet… Same principal as the other, except it’s shorter, the camera is much closer (No more than 3 feet from the face), the man being killed is at most 25 years old, and you can hear him screaming as the knife goes in and cuts its way out. Nothing. No psychological effect. At least other than “Ouch.”
At this point you might be questioning me as a person, and I really wouldn’t blame you. I’ve watched countless videos like that since out of sheer fascination over the transition from life to death, and the fact that people actually record it. I realize it can’t compare to actually standing there, seeing somebody you’ve known for years die while screaming in vein and I wouldn’t want it to, but it’s much closer than having never seen death at all. And for all that, I’ve learned a couple of things: One, I’m never, ever visiting any 3rd world former Soviet Union countries, and two, that desensitization is a handy thing to give yourself. It let’s you focus on the real issues, rather than running about in the chaos.
So which is healthier? It doesn’t matter. I’d rather see the world for what it is than lying to myself, saying all can be fixed in time. Why do we fight? Because we’re flawed. Humanity is the definition of imperfection. No matter how good things get, there’s always that darker side that never goes away. I’ll think about what a person will look like after a bomb explodes, what they’d sound like as they’re being decapitated, etc. for the rest of my life, and I accept it. It makes life that much more interesting.
Dwelling on the bad things isn’t any way of going about your business, no. And I don’t pretend to always be thinking of this crap (I’m not a fucking emo kid; not that it matters, as most of them can’t grasp anything bad outside of their own miserable suburban life anyways). But you shouldn’t shun it, either, because sooner or later something terrible will happen and you won’t be able to cope.
Desensitize yourself.
And with that, this ridiculously long, semi-self-analytical post comes to an end. I know deeply uplifting posts like this always brighten people’s day, but I’ll try to refrain from making any more like it. Too much thinking.
Ow.
Comments(6)
Hmm… I just read that, again… & It was much better this time. You can thank me anytime you want, I won’t complain, promise.
Good post Chris.
I think it’s a little creepy. You know, the fact that you watch these movies and feel nothing. What does that “desensitizing” allow you to feel? Do you feel your own actions, or are you just watching someone else? Pretty scary stuff. If you really think about it.
It’s only creepy because society has deemed deathto be something so inexplicably awful that nobody could walk away from watching it without going mad. Essentially, it’s over-hyped.
And if you “really think about it”-desensitization, I mean- it’s SENSIBLE. As I said, what good is being scared of death and violence? It doesn’t help you in any way, shape, or form, so you may as well cope with it.
First of all, the fact that people take a thing like murder and video tape it, That’s immoral and just plain evil. What kind of person tapes their friend commiting murder? Really.
I actually am pretty desensitized. I could watch one of those videos, I suppose, and be able to handle it without difficulty. Even if I tried, I couldn’t make myself get terribly emotional, or anything. It would be upsetting. That’s pretty gross stuff, but I could deal with it.
Never, however, would I go seeking this or take any part in watching it if I had to. So you ask how am I desensitized if I don’t watch anything like this? I think that sort of thing is partly just programmed into people. It’s something that you can’t change, really. (Although it’s true that society also plays a role in whether you can stand things like that or not.)
I doubt that you could actually watch the real thing without having a reaction. The difference between a movie and reality is everything.
As far as times when “tragedy strikes”, I dont act “like it was something unfathomable.” In fact, I can’t fathom it at all, really. Because I wasn’t there. I didn’t experience it. If I had, then that would be something totally different. Other people have reactions, and get upset. I sometimes really try to get a reaction out of myself. Often, I pretend to be upset, thinking that I then will become upset. It doesn’t work.
Graphic things like that aren’t really terrible to watch, but I find it sort of disgusting that you actively seek them out and watch them when you have the opportunity not to.
And the fact that you think we should watch things like that “because sooner or later something terrible will happen and you won’t be able to cope” is laughable. Nothing like that is ever going to happen to any one here, really. Not only is it too safe and ridiculously protected to have anything like that happen, but the chances of having that happen even in “any 3rd world former Soviet Union countries” is still basically zilch, unless you’re politically and sociologically active.
Don’t watch movies like that. They serve no purpose, and it’s a terrible disrespect for the dead and dying (as cliched as that sounds) for you to get entertainment out of their suffering.
Well, I guess I should start off by saying that it was over a year ago when I posted this, and my mindset has changed a lot since then. Do I still visit Ogrish? Yep. However, now it is more to seek out war-related clips given that our media has a wonderful habit of censoring the real bits of war (and what better motivation to protest war than seeing it for what it really is?). It’s a fascination with the destruction we inflict upon one another I guess…
But now when I look at the clips I have amassed on my hard drive of people dying in various terrible ways, it’s depressing. I don’t want to see people die (at least, my mood on average doesn’t descend that low anymore), which was pretty much the reason I sought after them in the first place.
Having said that, there are a couple things within your post you need to understand:
1. Death clips are very rarely shot by a best friend or even an aquientance of the victim. Most of the time it’s a reporter, a fellow terrorist, a security camera, etc.
2. At no point do I say anyone else should actively seek out this material if they don’t want to. My point was that you should understand what death really is before becoming scared of it and trying to shun it from your life. If you don’t fear it but haven’t ever seen these videos, great. Watching them is merely one way to try and achieve that goal, and I would agree it’s not what we as a society define as “tasteful”, but that’s how I went about it.
3. “I doubt that you could actually watch the real thing without having a reaction. The difference between a movie and reality is everything.”
As I said: I realize it can’t compare to actually standing there, seeing somebody you’ve known for years die while screaming in vein and I wouldn’t want it to.
4. Before you attempt to lecture at me about what is disgusting and immoral to watch, try and tell me you’ve never gotten off to porn. Then I’ll take that line of thought seriously.
5. “Don’t watch movies like that. They serve no purpose, and it’s a terrible disrespect for the dead and dying (as cliched as that sounds) for you to get entertainment out of their suffering.”
As I said above, it was never about the entertainment factor of watching people die. Why does a pathologist do what he does? Because he loves sticking his hands inside corpses? No, it’s his fascination with the subject matter, as is the case with me. Videos with people dying in them show us a side of reality that is rarely seen (hence the title of this post), and I find that having watched them, I have a much firmer grasp on the horrible things that people are capable of than I did before.
Again, I have little desire to revisit these clips anymore. I know what can be seen in them, so I’ve moved on. Right now I’d rather look at the beauty in life than the sad parts, but that’s just my personal preference and I won’t dare say that it has to be anyone else’s. It’s not my right, just as it is not yours to tell me what I should/shouldn’t be watching.
And thank you for the intelligent comment. Really, there’s nowhere near enough of them around here.
Good Point, on all accounts. I still stand by my main thought, though: That I would personally never want to watch anything like the clips you described.
I realize though, that you don’t want to either, anymore.